A Very Trainor Christmas is a Christmas album and the fourth major-label studio album by the American singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor. Honest OG Recording and Epic Records released it on October 30, 2020. Trainor involved her family members in the creation, co-writing its songs with her brothers, Ryan and Justin, among others. It features artists such as Earth, Wind & Fire; Seth MacFarlane; Trainor's cousins Jayden, Jenna, and Marcus Toney; and her father, Gary. The album includes cover versions of Christmas standards such as "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" (1951) and "Last Christmas" (1984), as well as six original recordings.
Trainor promoted A Very Trainor Christmas with public appearances and televised performances. It was supported by the single release of Trainor and MacFarlane's cover of "White Christmas" (1942), which reached number one on the Adult Contemporary chart. Several other tracks received music videos. Critical commentary for the album was generally positive, with praise directed towards Trainor's charisma and the material. It reached number seven on the US Top Holiday Albums chart and the top 50 in the Netherlands and Sweden. A deluxe edition was released on October 29, 2021, followed by a new version of the album on October 11, 2024.
Background
Meghan Trainor (pictured in 2014) provided vocal production on all of the tracks on A Very Trainor Christmas.[1]
In January 2020, shortly before the release of Trainor's third major-label studio album, Treat Myself (2020), Billboard announced that she had started writing original Christmas songs, planning to release them later in the year.[5] Three months into the COVID-19 lockdowns, she decided that it was the right time to complete her Christmas album: "We're gonna be here for a minute. Let's do the album now while we're stuck at home and not traveling."[6] With the gloom surrounding the world at the time, her intention with the project was to "spread some joy this year".[7] In a June 2020 interview, Trainor stated that she had been "trying to finish my Christmas album", further confirming the project.[8]
Trainor recalled that most of the work for the album, including the photoshoot, was done in July and August when the weather was hot.[7] Trainor pre-recorded two music videos and fifteen performances five months into her pregnancy, for later use.[9] She wanted the album to feel like "a pop Christmas", something that could be played throughout the year, and decided to include original songs along with covers.[6] On September 9, 2020, Trainor officially announced the album title as A Very Trainor Christmas on her social media accounts, along with the release date and artwork, which features her biting a candy cane while clad in a Christmas hat and a tinsel and bows-adorned dress.[10][11] A trailer for the album was released the following day, consisting of home footage of Trainor and her family.[12]
Composition
Trainor's entire family participated in the creation of A Very Trainor Christmas, as songwriters, background vocalists, producers, and instrumentalists.[12] Her cousins Jayden, Jenna & Marcus Toney, and father, Gary, appear as featured artists, while her brother Justin took part in production and songwriting and Ryan in the latter. Regarding this decision, Trainor stated that she is "a Christmas baby", and had always dreamed of releasing "a Christmas album and to do it with my family makes it that much better".[13]Earth, Wind & Fire and Seth MacFarlane were chosen as collaborators due to them being her family's interminable preferences.[14] Trainor stated that her family "worship[s] the ground they walk on – so to get them to feature on this album still doesn't feel real. Best Christmas Present Ever!"[14]
On "My Kind of Present", Trainor delivers throwback doo-wop vocals and insists the subject is her "kind of present" and she does not want any other gift for Christmas.[18] Conceived as a love song, she eventually started relating it to her affection towards her son: "When I perform it live, I do a dance where I tap my belly and I'm like, (singing) you're my kind of present."[7] "I Believe in Santa" was inspired by Trainor's quarrels with her friends, when she was aged 10, about whether Santa was real.[19] "Holidays", featuring Earth, Wind & Fire, "illustrates the connecting threads between '70sR&B/pop and current-day pop", according to Allan Sculley of The Spokesman-Review.[20] On "Naughty List", Trainor questions why she was placed on "the naughty list" and wonders if it was because she was "too good for [Santa]"; inspired by Ryan's affinity with hip hop music, it was written as a rap before being turned into a pop song.[7]
The covers on A Very Trainor Christmas are performed in a similar style to the original songs, not deviating too much from them.[21] Sculley thought that though Trainor "adds a few original touches, [...] the frothy instrumentation on these songs is standard stuff for today's version of pop music".[20] "Last Christmas" incorporates 1980ssynthesizers and clapping.[18][22] She sings "Winter Wonderland" (1934) with a lilt and ukulele accompaniment.[22] The Associated Press's Mark Kennedy described Trainor's cover of "Sleigh Ride" (1948) as "'60s-meets-2020" and "Silent Night" (1818) as "churchlike".[23]
Release and promotion
On October 7, 2020, Trainor released "My Kind of Present" and her cover version of "Last Christmas". Her entertainment company Honest OG Recording and Epic Records released A Very Trainor Christmas on October 30.[18][24][25] A 2020 single,[26] Trainor and MacFarlane's cover version of "White Christmas" debuted at number 24 on the Adult Contemporary chart issued dated November 14, 2020, the third holiday entry for both, and it later peaked at number 1 on the chart.[27][28] A music video for "Holidays" was released on November 23. In it, Trainor wears tiny gift bows on her face along with a white winter dress and a large red bow.[29][30] The song was further promoted with performances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and NBC's Christmas in Rockefeller Center special. Today's Lindsay Lowe noted she wore "a lot of oversized bows" during promotion for the album, which she described as a "bold pregnancy style".[31][32] On December 2, 2020, Trainor performed "Last Christmas" and "Holidays" on Today.[33][34] Eight days later, the music video for "I Believe in Santa", starring JoJo Siwa, was released.[35] Trainor performed "Christmas Got Me Blue" on The Late Late Show with James Corden on December 15.[36]
The deluxe version of A Very Trainor Christmas was released on October 29, 2021.[37] On November 26, 2021, Trainor released the music video for "My Kind of Present", featuring appearances from her husband, Daryl Sabara, and their son Riley.[38] Her cover version of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" peaked at number 16 on the Adult Contemporary chart dated December 11, 2021.[39] On December 16, Trainor performed "My Kind of Present" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" on Today.[40][41] During the 2022 Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade, she performed "My Kind of Present" live.[42]
Critical commentary for A Very Trainor Christmas was generally positive; some praised Trainor's charisma. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine thought she approached it with the same enthusiasm as her usual "old-fashioned showbiz razzle-dazzle" style. He added that the original recordings sound the most ebullient, but the whole album is "firmly within the realm of spirited seasonal soundtrack".[43] Sculley believed that Trainor was cheerful and charismatic.[20]
Others commented on the material. Writing for Idolator, Mike Wass called A Very Trainor Christmas a "resounding success" and believed in its potential to grow into a "go-to Christmas soundtrack" for American families in the following years.[44] He opined the album is exuberant and ensures "there's something for everybody" with its incorporation of various genres.[44] Sculley thought it is "fun and more original than many holiday albums".[20] Kennedy declared A Very Trainor Christmas "the best Christmas album of 2020" and described it as "a multi-textured triumph" due to Trainor's voice.[23]The Courier-Mail's Monique Pueblos believed the original songs create a festive yet unconventional mood and the covers are performed with integrity that does not change the original songs too much: "[The album] is full of feel-good tunes both old and new and will have you feeling the Christmas spirit year after year."[21] On the other hand, Knoxville News Sentinel's Chuck Campbell wrote that it lacks "well-crafted classics" to set it apart from other holiday albums, and the momentum is "routinely thwarted" by a combination of familiar and unfamiliar songs, which lead to "the party never hit[ting] its stride".[22]
In the United States, A Very Trainor Christmas debuted at number 144 on the Billboard 200 issued for November 14, 2020, with 7,000 album-equivalent units. Trainor's lowest-charting album, it eventually peaked at number 89.[27][45] The album entered at number seven on the Top Holiday Albums chart.[46]A Very Trainor Christmas peaked at number 70 and charted for two weeks on the Canadian Albums Chart.[47] The album reached number 47 on the UK Download Albums chart.[48] It charted at number 42 in the Netherlands and Sweden.[49][50] In Belgium, A Very Trainor Christmas peaked at number 71.[51]
A deluxe edition of A Very Trainor Christmas adds the following songs as tracks 1–3, prior to all of the songs on the standard edition of the album:[16]
"Holly Jolly Christmas" and "I'll Be Home" are available on the track list worldwide on all streaming platforms, however they are exclusive to Target in the United States for all CD editions of A Very Trainor Christmas. They do not appear on any vinyl editions of the album, or CD editions outside of the United States.[24][52][53]
Personnel
Credits are adapted from the liner notes of A Very Trainor Christmas.[1]
Meghan Trainor – lead vocals (all tracks), background vocals (1-6), vocal production (all tracks), keyboards (1), ukulele (7), production (1, 3), programming (15, 17), piano, guitar, engineering (17)
^The Target edition includes one additional original song and cover,[15] and the deluxe edition includes all eighteen songs along with one original track and two covers.[16]
