Megan Trainor reckons you're inch perfect- and we'd have to agree
There are several ways to appreciate the song of the season that is Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass. For a start, it’s a slinky, sassy, superb tune, tailor-made to be shaking its stuff all over your radio with its alluring doo-wop tones and wonky pop drops. The video is also viral-friendly eye-candy, with 70 million YouTube views to date and counting.
Then, more importantly, there’s the body-positive message wrapped in the lyrics of this most bodacious of tunes. Between calling out the fashion media’s abuse of Photoshop and challenging the idea that all pop stars should be size zero minxes, the 20-year-old Massachusetts’ native sets out her stall in favour of those with “all the right junk in all the right places”.
It’s a sweet and smart track that manages to do a hell of a lot in just a couple of minutes. Like Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Lopez and others have done before her, Trainor posits that there’s plenty of room for those who don’t necessarily fit into the carefully calibrated body measurements that usually hold sway in popland.
A song which celebrates that “every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top” is a blessed relief from the nonsense of the messages usually transmitted in pop lyrics and videos.
We certainly need more defiant tunes like this – and we’d like if they came just as bright and bubbly. Subversive tunes only work when you remember the pop as well as the polemic.
JIM CARROLL
Is this Cher’s biggest fan?
The recent news that Cher was postponing a raft of US tour dates mightn’t have made too much of an impact in Europe, but spare a thought for Dublin Cher superfan Jan Donoghue, who we spoke to on Tuesday morning, when she was waiting to board a flight from Dublin to New York to see her idol play a now cancelled concert at Madison Square Garden.
“I used to go to sleep to her as a baby. It just grew into this obsession as I got older. My sister had the cassette of her greatest hits and it was The Shoop Shoop Song I used to fall asleep to. When I was seven or eight, I got into the movie side of Cher. I used to think I was Rachel Flax. I used to sing Fever into the mirror. All I wanted was the pink polka-dot dress – not the blue one, there’s a big difference. All I wanted was a relationship with Bob Hoskins.
“I went to see Cher in the Point Depot on May 8th, 2004, and I was absolutely fuming because it was four days before my Confirmation and I knew if the concert was on after my Confirmation I would have had money to buy the merchandise. I got a Cher tattoo (above) when I was 16 because I wanted my first tattoo to be something ‘deep and meaningful’.
“This is an absolute nightmare. I’m devastated, but sure what can you do? She keeps telling people to be patient on Twitter. We’re after getting invited to a brunch in New York for devastated Cher fans – the average age is about 60. The Cher fans on Twitter got on to us. So I’m really excited about that.”
UNA MULLALLY
#SAVEECCLES
Poor Eccles, the Barlows’ border terrier on Corrie. The things those little button eyes have seen (Ken’s affairs alone are enough for a lifetime of doggie therapy). Now, in keeping with Barlow family tradition, Eccles is being accused of a crime she did not commit (biting Amy Barlow) and has gone on the lam like The Fugitive or The A-Team.
Tracy Barlow, who was imprisoned for a crime she did commit (braining a man with a statuette), is taking the moral high ground and wants her pound of furry flesh. But there’s already an online campaign to #saveeccles. She’s been abducted by Maddie and Sophie for his own protection and Eccles’s owner, toothy eye-wear enthusiast, Deirdre Barlow, is prevaricating. She was once subject to a similar miscarriage of justice (free the Weatherfield one!).
Meanwhile, languishing in human prison for a crime he also did not commit, Peter Barlow ponders why there’s no #savepeter hashtag. Will Eccles be saved? I hope so.
I, like other simple-minded viewers, would happily watch a whole episode just featuring Eccles being given a bath.
If not, I propose a spin-off show where Eccles gets prison tattoos, skips jail, and goes from town to town solving crimes.
PATRICK FREYNE
