Title is like fairground pick-and-mix: saccharine, indistinguishably melted together, digestible despite all good sense.
We’ve got doo-wop harmonies, canny Bruno Mars-esque pop and the whitest rap-breaks in history. When it works, it’s peppy and listenable, when it doesn’t, it’s cringeworthy. Trainor gets marks for bravery, but just as many demerits for her inexplicable faux-patois, her mean streak, the general air of someone pretending to be something they’re not (see the excruciating Bang Dem Sticks). When the alchemy falters you can glimpse the dissonance beneath the sheen: bowdlerised lyrics, self-contradiction, the sense of a neutered, confused adolescence.
