The closest I’ve come to enjoying the work of Trainor in the past was when Valerie Cherish sang a snatch of “All About That Bass” during the second season finale of The Comeback. Generally, I find that Trainor has a sad version of the Midas touch, where everything she touches turns off-brand, be it doo-wop, R&B, or country. This new song I like, “Let You Be Right,” finds her yet again dabbling in genre, this time disco, and while no one is going to confuse her with Evelyn “Champagne” King any time soon…this is nice? She sings it with an inviting coo, the bass line is intoxicatingly wiggly, the guitar rips off Nile Rogers but like respectfully. It reminds me of, like, best-case-scenario Maroon 5. Is that a self-own? Is all of this???
The low-key disco revival is such a strange beast—you can trace its current wave back to the late ’00s, when Ne-Yo had a hit with the Off the Wall-inflected “Because of You” (and Mariah Carey tried it with “I’m That Chick”). Madonna’s Hard Candy, which turned 10 years old last month, was somehow more disco than the preceding album she peddled as such, Confessions on a Dance Floor. A few years later, Daft Punk and Pharrell wowed us with “Get Lucky,” but it never really took off from there—it’s just kind of been percolating. And so, we get stuff like “Let You Be Right,” as well as the equally enjoyable “How Long” by Charlie Puth. In lieu of an all out disco re-explosion, I like living in a world where it’s no longer shunned via a bigotry-laden disco-sucks attitude, where there always might be a disco hit just around the corner, or like, on a Kacey Musgraves album. (However, I do not like living in a world where “Can’t Stop the Feeling” lived up to its name by becoming inescapable.)
If I’m crazy for liking this Trainor song, at least I’m not alone. The majority of Jezebel staffers who cared to listen and comment on this after I put it into Slack agreed that it is…weirdly good. Some pull quotes:
“help” -Joanna Rothkopf
“i do not care for meghan trainor, but I have a weakness for disco in all forms” -Megan Reynolds
“it’s a nice pop song” -Clover Hope
“that song is fun” – Aimee Lutkin
“meghan trainor always sounds like a worse version of what i’d rather listen to” – Hazel Cills
“i won’t be listening to this stuff again but i don’t hate it thanks” -Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Meghan Trainor released another song today, as well, but no one really had much to say about that one. Megan Reynolds said “Let You Be Right” reminds her of Kylie’s “Love at First Sight,” so let’s close out this post with a song that I think the entire world can agree is magical: