"All About That Bass" spread throughout the globe with the speed of a pandemic disease, and its viral nature neatly camouflaged how
Meghan Trainor
was no naive ingenue. She landed a publishing deal at the age of 18 and had one of her songs recorded by pop-country superstars
Rascal Flatts
, show-biz bona fides that belied her Internet sensation status.
Title
,
Trainor
's full-length debut, suggests this tactic was deliberate: snag an audience via a near-novelty, then rely on her well-honed craft for the rest of the record. Certainly, echoes of "All About That Bass" can be heard throughout
, particularly in how she and her chief collaborator
Kevin Kadish
balance a love of old-fashioned girl group pop with old-school hip-hop, but the cumulative effect of the album's 15 tracks is to shift attention away from her cutesy style to her songwriting skills. Admittedly,
is eager to embrace her enthusiasm for musical theater -- she's the first post-Glee pop star, consciously putting on a show as she sways between rapped verses and cabaret choruses, liberally borrowing from
Dion
's "Runaround Sue" for "Dear Future Husband," making sure that she laughs after delivering a pun on her own last name -- but over the course of a record the affectations don't seem quite as potent as they do when they're distilled to a single. By the time the record winds its way around to the
Motown
bounce of "Lips Are Movin" -- a single equally inspired by vintage 45s and
Amy Winehouse
's snazzy new-millennial revival that's the best song here --
's giddiness has become ingratiating, so it's easier to warm to her considerable skill at pastiche and performance. Far from consigning her to one-hit wonder territory, the blend of strength of personality and music-biz savvy on
shows that
is clever enough to parlay a big hit into a real career. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine