Writing a No. 1 smash about having a big booty has a lot of advantages.
You become a much-tweeted-about star. You get to headline your own tour. You even get to go on the “Today” show and hold court on body image, as Meghan Trainor did on Monday when the Daily News met her backstage.
But, wait, there’s more!
“They let me eat pizza!” Trainor told The News. “I’m getting Chinese food tonight! I’m so excited. It’s all I’m thinking about.”
She’s half kidding, of course. But Trainor is sincerely joyful about achieving stardom specifically by blowing away the confining image of the whippet-thin pop star.
In her inescapable song “All About That Bass” — No. 1 for eight weeks running — 20-year-old Trainor endeared herself to body-image-besieged teens everywhere by snarking out lines like, “It’s pretty clear I ain’t no size two/but I can shake it, shake it like I’m supposed to.”
Of course, her meal ticket of a hit has also been a lot for some to swallow. Trainor has been slammed from both sides — advocates for the thin, and those for the very thick.
“Some people say, ‘Oh yeah, the song is cool but I wish you were fatter,’ ” the rather fit-looking, though not rail-thin, star said with a laugh. “Sorry.”
Others say she’s a thin-o-phobe because the song refers to “skinny bitches.”
“I didn’t work this hard to hate on skinny people,” she said. “I wrote the song to help my body confidence — and to help others.”
She also toiled for many years at her craft before suddenly breaking through this fall.
When Trainor was growing up on Nantucket, Mass., music was always part of her life. The island fostered isolation and introspection. “In winter it looks like zombies took over,” she said. “Ain’t nobody there.”
Her father, a musician, introduced her to James Brown, jazz and doo-wop. The last style really stuck, which explains its influence on the “Bass” single.
“Doo-wop was the catchiest stuff,” Trainor said. “I wanted to write a song, like (the Chordettes’) ‘Lollipop,’ that the whole world is obsessed with. One of those songs that won’t leave.”
Trainor penned her first piece at age 11 to toast her uncle at his wedding. Recognizing her talent, her dad bought her a MacBook and pointed out the GarageBand feature. She was using it to produce songs by age 13.
She wanted to be a pop star, and naively figured that the first step was writing your own stuff. “I thought Britney (Spears) wrote every word to every song,” she said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘What’s a Max Martin?’ “
Trainor began making lots of home recordings, amassing enough material to eventually yield two self-released albums: “I’ll Sing With You” and “Only 17,” which both came out in 2011.
When she was 18, her writing got her a publishing deal. “You mean they’ll pay me to make music and I don’t have to go to college?” Trainor recalled thinking. “Let’s do this.”
Two of her songs were recorded by the country band Rascal Flatts. She titled one “Liquor Talking,” which is “about going to bars, which I don’t go to,” she admitted. “I also wrote about being in a club, but I’d never been in a club. I asked my mom to get me a fake ID but she said, ‘I’m not helping you break the law.’ “
Trainor did have daydreams about being onstage herself, but she didn’t think she’d ever get there on talent alone, the way stereotype-busters Adele, Aretha Franklin and Cass Elliott did.
“It’s just about having that confidence, and I never had that,” she said. “I used to try to hide my curves in clothes.”
Her dad told her if she was ever going to make it, she’d have to have “a look.” “I said, ‘OK, I’m going to look really skinny by 25, and then I’ll be an artist.’ “
Inspiration eventually struck for the song that would change her self-image, and her life, when told writing partner Kevin Kadish that she no longer wanted to write songs for others to sing.
“I said, ‘Man, I’m sick of pretending to be Rihanna. Let’s write for no one star. Let’s write for the world. What does the world need right now?’ And ‘All About That Bass’ came out in 40 minutes.”
Her publisher shopped the song to every star around, including Beyoncé. No one bit.
Rather than accepting defeat, Trainor became defiant and got up the nerve to push herself as a singer. She finally landed an audition with L.A. Reid in which she accompanied herself on a ukulele.
“L.A. told me, ‘You’re an artist. You can write songs,'” Trainor said.
He signed her to Epic and released the “Bass” single at just the right time. All summer, big-butt songs dominated the airwaves, including Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” and Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea’s “Booty.” But those songs present ample behinds as a sexual fetish for others to enjoy, while Trainor’s piece extols the larger figure as a self-image booster.
“Nicki Minaj is great,” Trainor says. “But I don’t know what her song is about. I know her anaconda don’t, or his don’t. But I don’t get it.”
The more clearly stated mission of Trainor’s single has had enough traction to spawn an album, called “Title,” coming early next year, and a new tour that hits Irving Plaza on March 13.
By then, the songwriter hopes to have put some of the body talk behind her — especially since the hit has given license for the media to become uncommonly nosy.
“I had a reporter ask me how much I weigh. I said to him, ‘You go first: How much do you weigh?’ People always ask me what I eat. Other artists don’t get asked these questions.”
Of course, all the scrutiny has only made Trainor more famous. Beneath the “All About That Bass” video on YouTube (which has been viewed more than 220 million times), the comment-section “debate” over her size — is she too big? Too small? — has taken on a life of its own.
“First, I was like, ‘What’s this?’ ” Trainor says. “But my friends said, ‘They’re talking about you.’ At that point, I was like: ‘Discuss. Retweet. Let’s take this thing all the way.’ “
jfarber@nydailynews.com
