“Wave” starts off with panoramic piano and titanic vocals before a gaudy EDM pulse kicks in, turning it into something like a Cascada remix for a middle school dance in a sweaty gym. “Nice to Meet Ya”, the most tolerable track, is engineered to be a banger, with tingling drums and a mediocre Nicki Minaj verse, but its whisper of a chorus is harsh and irritating. This is self-flagellation disguised as motivation, a Peloton instructor prompting you to pedal faster until you hurl.Ĭonfusing production choices make the album even more exhausting. “I’m crazy but I’m sweet,” she warbles on “Blink.” “Evil Twin” is more explicit: an apology from Trainor for the “crazy bitch” side of her, which makes her “make my bad decisions, but I’m innocent.” Where Lizzo and other pop stars who capitalize on the commodification of female empowerment have embraced the unruly, unlikable woman-“100% that bitch, even when I’m crying, crazy”-Trainor is left constantly placating: for hesitating to take a compliment, for daring to get drunk, for being both too much and too little. Much of Treat Myself relies on the idea of female duplicity instead of dismantling the trope, Trainor’s lyrics capitulate to it. (Two years later, with a new album to promote, she changed her mind.) Feminists condemned the song for its not-so-subtle messaging (your body is acceptable, but only because men want to fuck it), and Trainor later announced that she didn’t consider herself a feminist-a sentiment she doubled down on with followup single “Dear Future Husband,” which painted a housewife fantasy in which marital happiness hinges on the wife buying groceries. She catapulted to fame in 2014 with “All About That Bass,” a catchy-enough jingle assuring the masses that men do, in fact, like butts. But in Trainor’s world, having it all tends to center around male approval. If you ask Meghan Trainor, she might say she makes feel-good songs, anthems for boss-bitches-in-training who yearn to “have it all,” as she croons.
The closest thing to a mission statement is “Babygirl,” a glitchy, throbbing wail whose chorus goes “Love yourself! Love yourself! Love yourself! Love yourself! AHHH!” Treat Myself is clogged with oozing ballads, contaminated funk, and garish shudders of EDM. Treat Myself was originally scheduled for release back in August 2018, but Trainor pushed it back because she couldn’t stop writing songs, vowing not to release it “until I get everything out of my head and recorded in the studio.” The result is an album that tries to be all things to all people, a sonic overload that bludgeons the listener with bastardized “empowerment” for 15 songs.
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