Pop singer and songwriter Meghan Trainor had already devoted most of her life to music when she scored her first hit in 2014 (when she was 20 years old) with a dance-friendly paean to body positivity, "All About That Bass." Born in December 1993, Trainor was born and raised on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, where she began making music when she was just seven, and wrote her first song at the age of 11. Trainor attended high school at the Nauset High School on Cape Cod; there she sang and played trumpet in the jazz band, and also studied guitar, taking lessons with Johnny Spampinato, noted guitarist with NRBQ and the Incredible Casuals. In addition, Trainor played guitar, keyboards, and sang with a local Nantucket band called Island Fusion for four years. Trainor attended the Berklee College of Music's Performance Program, a special five-week course, in 2009 and 2010, receiving high marks and reaching the finals of their songwriting competition. By the time she was 18, Trainor had self-released three albums of her own material and landed a publishing deal with Big Yellow Dog Music (who placed her songs with artists such as Rascal Flatts, Macy Kate, Common Kings, and Sabrina Carpenter) before she signed a deal with Epic Records. Trainor's first single for Epic was "All About That Bass," in which she proudly declares she's "no stick figure silicon Barbie doll," and "every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top." The pastel-colored video for "All About That Bass" became an online sensation, racking up over 1,600,000 views on YouTube within a month of its debut in June 2014.
Mark Deming
AllMusic.com
