Grammy winning singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor as a teenager believed she had the talent to be a superstar, but not the right look, she tells Tracy Smith in an interview for CBS SUNDAY MORNING WITH CHARLES OSGOOD to be broadcast March 6 (9:00 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network.
Trainor, 22, now has the kind of success many artists dream of, including the hit "All About That Bass," an anthem for self-acceptance. Yet, not so long ago, she hid her body as a teen growing up on
THE ISLAND of Nantucket, Massachusetts.
"I - every day - wore sweatshirts and sweatpants to cover up my body because I was so insecure," Trainor tells Smith. "And it would be summer. And I would go on vacation and I'd be in Trinidad and Tobago, 90-degree weather, and I'd be wearing sweatshirts that said 'Nantucket.'"
Trainor said she would resist family members asking her to change into more weather-appropriate clothes.
"I didn't want to show my arms," she says. "I didn't want to show anything, and I was just so insecure and uncomfortable, and I thought, like, 'All right, if I'm fully covered - I'm good. And that's not what I should have been feeling."
She can't explain exactly why she felt like that. "I don't know," Trainor tells Smith. "And I see pictures of my face and... I'm sad, and I'm in a sweatshirt and I'm in my room producing because I just turned off the idea of, 'You'll be the face."
Back then, Trainor tells Smith, she told herself she would worry about dieting and getting her body together when she was 25 or so. But thanks to the phenomenal success of "All About That Bass" and a number of other hits including "Lips are Movin'," Trainor learned to accept herself, and as a result has become an important role model for young listeners struggling with similar body image issues.
"I get messages all the time, 'I hated myself, I didn't want to go to school. I was so uncomfortable, and now I love myself. And I was in a really dark place until your song came out,'" Trainor says. "And I was like, 'Whoa, man, we've got to do more of these. We've got to do more of these songs."
Smith visits with Trainor in the recording studio where she was working on her second album, on Nantucket, where Smith talks with Trainor's dad Gary, and they visit her old school, Cape Cod's Nauset Regional High School.
CBS SUNDAY MORNING is broadcast Sundays (9:00-10:30 AM, ET) on the
CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.
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