Biography

Meghan Trainor is a Grammy-winning American pop singer known for such smash hits as "Lips Are Moving" and "All About That Bass."QUOTES“Growing up, I didn't get the talk of 'Make sure boys take you on a date and treat you right.' So I was the girl who wasn't dating and would just text. I dated these guys who didn't have jobs and I would always be paying. At one point, I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, 'You're too pretty and cool to be treated like this.'”—Meghan TrainorSynopsisBorn on December 22, 1993, Meghan Trainor was raised on Nantucket Island and spent her childhood surrounding herself with music, learning to play various instruments and writing her own songs. When she was 18, after having self-recorded three of her own albums, she was signed to a music publishing deal, which soon led to another with Epic Records. She then co-wrote "All About That Bass," a song that the young singer soon took to No. 1 around the world. With follow-up songs such as "Lips Are Moving" and "Dear Future Husband," Trainor's debut album also took the charts by storm.Early YearsMeghan Trainor was born in Massachusetts on December 22, 1993, and raised on Nantucket Island. Her family had musical roots (her dad was a church organist and her uncle, Burton Toney, was a bona fide recording artist), and Trainor took an early interest as well. She tinkered with making music as young as age 7 while she learned the piano. It would only be a few years down the road that she wrote her first song at age 11. The following years would find her penning songs and branching out into playing the guitar, ukulele and percussion instruments.As she got more serious, her parents bought her software that allowed her to record her own songs, and she continued on the musical path right through her time at Nauset High School on Cape Cod. Those four years were spent singing, playing trumpet in the jazz band and honing her guitar skills, while also singing with local band Island Fusion.Award-Winning SongwriterShe was a two-time enrollee (2009 and 2010) in the Berklee College of Music's five-week Performance Program, and she made the finals of the program’s songwriting competition. Also during this period, Trainor was named Best Female Artist at the 2009 International Acoustic Music Awards and won the grand prize at the 2010 New Orleans Songwriters Festival.Ever ambitious, by the time Trainor was 18 she had recorded three albums of her own material. Her parents were huge supporters, and they would take her to regional songwriting conventions through her teen years. The conventions were a chance for songwriters to get their material heard, and one such session led to the first big step in Trainor’s career.Hitmaker: 'All About That Bass'When she was 18, Trainor signed a publishing deal with Nashville’s Big Yellow Dog Music. With the deal in place, the first big piece of Trainor’s dream fell into place and a realization took hold that she could make a career out of her music. Before long, Big Yellow Dog was sending Trainor-penned songs to the likes of Grammy winner Rascal Flatts, Sabrina Carpenter and a host of others.With that level of success under her belt, Trainor soon signed with Epic Records, where her first single was the massive hit “All About That Bass,” which was released in June 2014. At first, Epic pitched the song to several other singers to perform, but when there were no takers, Trainor herself sang it. The track, a catchy ode to women who aren’t built like a “stick-figure silicon Barbie doll," received 1,600,000 YouTube views its first month and reached No. 1 on charts across the world. In the U.S. “All About That Bass” spent eight weeks at No. 1—the longest chart reign of an Epic Records single in history—while on its way to selling millions of downloads domestically and overseas. Trainor’s next singles may not have been the overwhelming hit that “All About That Bass” was, but both "Lips Are Moving" and “Dear Future Husband” reached the pop Top 20 and got tens of millions of YouTube views while helping Trainor’s self-titled debut album begin its run at No. 1 around the world. Health Issues and Grammy WinIn 2015, Meghan Trainor was forced to cancel her U.S. “MTrain” tour due to ongoing problems with her vocal cords. After canceling her tour, the singer has been scheduled for surgery to address the vocal cord hemorrhage. She issued a statement on her Instagram account saying, "Sadly I will need to cancel the remainder of my tour and get surgery to finally fix this once and for all. I am devastated, scared, and so sorry."The following year, Trainor was back on the stage as seen with a live tribute to pop/soul icon Lionel Richie on the 58th Annual Grammy Awards telecast. Later that night, Trainor won one of the show's marquee awards as Best New Artist. [h/t: Bio]