Still Don’t Care signals empowerment ahead of Meghan Trainor’s next chapter

In the decade following her debut album, Meghan Trainor has lived myriad lives — yet beneath the bright, cheery pop music remains a consistent message: stay true to who you are and ignore the haters. That spirit endures on her new lead single, Still Don’t Care, which serves as the first teaser of her forthcoming seventh-full-length album, Toy with Me, due 24 April.

Meghan Trainor embraces growth on Toy with Me and new tour

In true Trainor fashion, Still Don’t Care was inspired by real-life situations. “I was seeing a lot of hate all over the world, but I was getting a lot of hate when I started posting more pictures of … my fitness journey and my health journey. And I didn’t really expect that,” Trainor told The Associated Press. “I would get really upset at comments and I was like, ‘I wish I didn’t feel like this. I wish I didn’t give them so much power.’”

She went on: “And so, when I write songs, I always write in the perspective of how I wish I thought, like All About That Bass. I didn’t feel like that when I wrote it. And all my self-love anthems. But when I perform them and I see how it affects other people, I start believing them.”

Still Don’t Care is yet another example of that evolution, with its maximalist, ’80s-pop production and a choir contributed by Pentatonix’s Scott Hoying. Her mother, brother and sister-in-law contribute background vocals on the track as well — perhaps softening the song’s gloves-up approach to combating online hate. “You could tear me apart,” Trainor sings. “But I sleep well at night.”

It’s the first taste of Toy with Me, which Trainor teases will include a few self-love bops, songs intended to excise her anger and lots of familial love. “The only features I have right now in this moment are my kids, Riley and Barry, because I wrote them a beautiful song, the only, like, slower song. It’s called ‘Little One’ and it’s about how I wish they could stay little forever,” she says, smiling. “When I play it, Riley goes, ‘Oh, this is my song. Play my song!’ It’s literally my lullaby for them. And at the end of the song they say, ‘I love you, Mama,’ and it’s just the cutest thing ever. And that’s when everyone’s crying.”

Trainor said she worked on the album for eight months. “I exhausted myself, and I went a little too hard. I got excited to be home with the kids and work on my songs, but then I definitely, I overdid it, and my body started doing weird things, giving me signals. Like, my tongue started burning one day. And I was like, ‘What’s this?’ And it wouldn’t go away forever. And the dentist was like, ‘Oh, you’re stressed,’” she recalled.

Songwriting, too, proved more of a challenge. “I usually write a song in one day and I’m done with it, but each song on this album took, like, months to finish,” she said. “So that was the only difference from this album than any other album I’ve done.”

Much of that was because she enlisted songwriters she’d never worked with before — people who would push her to make the song the best it could be — challenges she welcomed with open arms.

The work is fulfilling, and on the evidence of this forthcoming release, she is evolving. Trainor will also embark on a North American tour in 2026, with openers Icona Pop. The Get in Girl tour kicks off 12 June at the Pine Knob Music Theatre in Clarkston, Michigan, and ends 15 August at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. Along the way she’ll hit Toronto, Cincinnati, St. Louis, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Houston, Denver, Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego and Phoenix.

Trainor’s last tour, the Timeless Tour, marked her first in seven years. It proved to her that she can do this thing again. “I’m not absolutely petrified like I was for the Timeless Tour,” she said. “I know I can survive it and it can be really fun.”

With Toy with Me on the horizon and a full-scale tour coming, Meghan Trainor is turning real-world friction into soaring pop anthems — and showing that growth, family and self-love can all live centre stage.

For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels