No More All About That Bass Parodies Please
Last week, NASA's interns produced a parody of Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass" entitled, naturally, "All About That Space." This followed on the heels of a Star Wars-themed spin on Trainor's hit entitled "All About That Base," a family's Thanksgiving feast set to "All About That Baste," and a fishing-centric revision entitled "All About That Bass." The difference, this time, comes from shortening the "a" in "bass.", Then there's the matter of particular technical qualities of "Bass." The song works, if it does at all, because of Trainor's impassioned delivery. She's not an Adele-caliber vocalist, but, to her credit, she delivers each line with unabashed energy. Because the structure of the song is so ploddingly by-the-numbers, anything less of a Trainorian effort will make the singer sound as if they're being forced to perform against their will. Similarly, to change the subject matter from Trainor's tricky tightrope walk mocking "skinny bitches" while still urging body positivity for all necessitates replacing it with something equally complex. Given the wild popularity of "Bass," it's very easy to assume that just swapping out words will make for a song that's interesting and coherent. But the parodies take something at least interesting for a single listen and make it into a list of words used in Star Wars or bass fishing. There's an argument to be made that to parody "All About That Bass" is to elide its central point about body-positivity, silencing Trainor, but the ersatz Trainor videos out there aren't offensive. They're just trite. Listeners have spent enough time with "Bass" to write their own version, but completely misunderstand why the song worked. They should leave the Meghan Trainor parodies to the person who parodies Meghan Trainor better than anyone Meghan Trainor.