You thought we were done talking about her. BUT YOU WERE WRONG.
[Video][Website]
[4.00]
Anthony Easton: Less politically problematic than her last single, but less interesting as well. A jaunty fuck off song, well connected to others in the genre, believable and tightly constructed, but a bit too self consciously dumb and trying to be clever.
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: We’re approaching Cee-Lo album levels of recycling the hit here, folks.
[2]
Alfred Soto: Does she say “I’m talkin’ tacos with my sweet tongue”? She isn’t, right? Well, Nellie McKay would have.
[2]
Andy Hutchins: Remember the Summer of Ass, before we fell into the Fall of Oh, Right, That Was Mostly White Women Trying to Get On By Any Means and Their Music Actually Kinda Sucks? This is an overcaffeinated bullshit symphony, and while stealing from Motown is as time-honored a tradition in pop as there is, stealing in a way that would shame even Glee is just stupid. A point for the Mike Jonesian audacity of reminding the world that “All About That Bass” was a No. 1 record in the hook of the next single, and another for radio programmers still playing this at an elevated BPM that makes it sound a bit more propulsive than it is.
[2]
Iain Mew: Just as I preferred the Power Music Workout cover of “All About That Bass” that briefly graced the UK charts ahead of the real thing’s release, I preferred the sped up version of this that I was accidentally listening to for a bit. Partly because it highlighted the unexpectedly bright Cher Lloyd elements of the verses, though even then the limp cliché of the title phrase and the return to Eliza Doolittle territory for the chorus still brought it down.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: It’s just “All About That Bass” but ready for Radio Disney right out the box. There’s the same post-Iggy rap impression flowing into the same girl-group imitation. Can’t blame Meghan Trainor for sticking to a winning formula, and the whole song is catchy enough to justify it, but this is all about the same thing as last time.
[5]
Danilo Bortoli: Scratch everything that made “All About That Bass” slightly interesting (its context and the conversation it started, things I admit that have nothing to do with the music itself) and then we will have “Lips Are Movin'”, a shallow song about shallow things, a track which is also basically a Pipettes song minus the charisma and songcraft said group used to be remembered for. And since everything here is extremely calculated in order to recreate some kind of really forced playfulness, the listener is left with a sense of hollowness that contaminates the whole song because, well, the hook here is pretty much steady.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: I’m not sure how the success of Trainor’s doo-wop schtick comes as a surprise to anyone, given the continued popularity of Hairspray, High School Musical and their ilk among teens. It’s a lot more palatable without body politics.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: I don’t get why Trainor engenders such vitriol; I think her doo-wop injection into 2014 pop is kinda cute. I also think her extremely-white-girl rapping is endearing. She’s obviously older but reminds me of Aguilera’s first album, that mostly-but-not-quite squeaky-clean well-scrubbed pop vibe. I wouldn’t turn away from this on the radio.
[6]
Brad Shoup: Getting to #1 is more impressive than getting all these stylistic touches to cohere, I suppose, but just barely. There’s the soul piano and bari sax, a pop-rap hook and verse (one’s good, the other’s not), some chart-and-B singing on the chorus. She arches into some poignant notes there, and her harmonies are similarly rueful. This should hold for a lot longer than the first single, at least in my household.
[8]
Dan MacRae: Remember on The Simpsons when Marge was super excited to buy Lisa a baseball cap that says “Pobody’s Nerfect In Australia” because “It’s clever, just like you.” That scenario is going to play out times 10,000 with parents getting their kids a Meghan Trainor album as a holiday gift. Poor Lisa.
[3]
Cédric Le Merrer: White rapper girl with cheerleader tendencies over Mark-Ronsonized Motown sounds on paper like a plot devised by Karmin once they realized no one really liked them. The best that can be said about “Lips Are Movin'” is that it sounds better than that.
[4]
Megan Harrington: I hope she uses “bass” as a lyric in every song and it becomes like car travel game spotting where the word pops up next.
[4]