She’s all about that bass, no treble — and he’s all about returning to his home base, no trouble.
Meghan Trainor brings her “Timeless” tour to Jiffy Lube Live in Virginia on Tuesday alongside singer, actor and TikTok guru Chris Olsen, who grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
“I feel like I’ve listened to this [radio station] so many times in my life,” Olsen told WTOP. “This would be the radio that I’m pretty sure would be on every morning driving to school. This is D.C. This is it. We’ve made it.”
“Chris’ hometown!’ Trainor told WTOP. “He came on my podcast called ‘Workin’ On It’ and we realized our birthdays were the same exact date, Dec. 22, so we fell in love like, ‘Whoa, we’re soul mates, we are the same person.’ We’ve been inseparable ever since and I hired him to help me with my TikToks and be my best friend.”
While Olsen was born in D.C., Trainor was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and grew up listening to 2000s pop.
“I was listening to T-Pain, I loved T-Pain,” Trainor said. “I was listening to whatever my brothers put on, then sometimes I would get to have a say and put Britney Spears on, but luckily my brothers loved the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC with me so we would all listen to that together. Then my dad would play us old-school music, so we would listen to Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. Then my mom would play a lot of Madonna and Billy Joel.”
In 2014, she signed with Epic Records for her first album “Title” (2015) with hits like “Dear Future Husband” and “Lips Are Movin.'” Trainor co-wrote the songs with Baltimore native Kevin Kadish, who attended Owings Mills High School and created his own music management major at the University of Maryland in College Park.
“I was 18 I think and I was living in Nashville and I drove to Franklin to write with a guy named Kevin Kadish,” Trainor said. “We were working together on the whole album and just kept getting confused by what we were hearing from the label and managers. We were hearing different things, so we were like, ‘Let’s write a song to them saying, ‘Your lips are movin’, I know you’re lying because your lips are movin’, you just talk in circles.'”
Of course, the album’s biggest pop hit was the catchy No. 1 smash “All About That Bass.”
“[Kevin] had a title in his notes that said ‘all bass, no treble,’ and I was like, ‘Well, all the kids say, ‘I’m all about that’ when they’re saying I like something, and literally I’m all about my booty, my thickness and I got no treble,” Trainor said. “Like in music, bass is thick and treble is the thin, high parts … so I was like, ‘I’m all about that thick,’ you know? Then we wrote it that day in 45 minutes and I was like, ‘No one is ever gonna hear this.'”
“All About That Bass” was not only nominated for song of the year at the Grammys, it was also nominated for the top prize of Record of the Year alongside Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” Sia’s “Chandelier,” Iggy Azalea and Charlie XCX’s “Fancy” and Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” which ultimately won.
“He got me,” Trainor said. “I’ve never felt cooler. I was like fan-girling the whole night. I was living at like Park La Brea [in Los Angeles] and I was like, ‘What am I doing here?’ It was the best night of my life.”
The following year, Trainor returned to the Grammys to win best new artist just a few months before the release of her second album “Thank You” (2016), featuring the hit single “No.”
Her third album “Treat Myself” (2020) delivered even more hits with “No Excuses” and “Nice to Meet Ya” featuring Nicki Minaj, followed by her Seth MacFarlane duet “White Christmas” on her holiday album “A Very Trainor Christmas” (2020). Her fifth album “Takin’ it Back” (2022) delivered the hit song “Made You Look” with funny turns of phrases like, “Call up your chiropractor just in case your neck breaks.”
Now, her latest album “Timeless” just dropped in June with the single “Been Like This” featuring T-Pain.
“‘Been Like This,’ thank you for playing it on the radio,” Trainor said. “‘Whoops’ is one of my favorites, that’s been playing on the radio recently so thank you, then we just released the deluxe, which has my favorite songs: ‘Make a Move,’ ‘Booty’ and ‘Criminals,’ which is also in the new TV show ‘The Perfect Couple,’ which is my dream come true. It’s crazy seeing all these famous talented actors [like Nicole Kidman] dancing to my pop song.”
At this point, they had to run to get ready for their next show, doing makeup in the green room.
“I’m starting my makeup, so I have beautiful, blue, glittery eyes right now,” Trainor said. “You should do that for your hometown. For the hometown, if you show up, Chris is going to have gorgeous makeup that I’m gonna do.”
“Meghan is the makeup artist for this tour, so she is doing it for me as well,” Olsen said. “I’m ready. If people show up for the show, I will show up with the glittery makeup. … My parents still live in Maryland, so I’m still a DMV girl.”
Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:
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