By: Kyra Macomber
According to a TikTok posted on Chris Olsen’s page on Nov. 18, we are currently in a “Meghan Trainor Renaissance,” which he claims to have had a hand in ushering in. Although this may be ambitious for just any influencer, Chris Olsen has truly impacted the current trajectory of Meghan Trainor’s career in the music industry. Through a slew of brilliant social media and PR moves, Olsen, Trainor and their teams have changed the general public’s opinion on the pop star.
Meghan Trainor’s musical career took off with her 2014 pop hit, “All About That Bass.” Trainor had cemented herself as an artist to watch as her career began taking off. However, at 21-years-old she had a main demographic of 30 to 40-year-old-women. Because of her slightly older listeners, her numbers were lower on popular streaming services of the time, such as Spotify and Pandora, so Trainor seemed to mostly fizzle out of the main public eye after about two years, despite her Grammy Award.
However, this status began to change when the star created a TikTok account and began posting semi-regularly on the app. Trainor was a pioneer on this app, being one of the first celebrities to embrace it before TikTok hit its mainstream popularity. Although her TikTok’s were garnering attention, with most of her older work on the app getting one to three million views, this would only be the beginning.
Enter Chris Olsen, 24, who began posting to TikTok regularly in early 2020. Basing his early videos on his then-relationship with fellow TikToker Ian Paeget, the two gained immense following and success, with a combined nine million followers at the end of their relationship. Following their breakup, Olsen was able to successfully pivot his content to focus on himself and his interests. He now has nine million followers on his own.
In April of 2022, Olsen appeared on the podcast “Workin’ on It,'' hosted by Trainor and her brother. Here it was revealed that Olsen and Trainor were childhood best friends and regaled listeners with stories of their early friendship. From this point on, followers of each were treated to many TikTok’s of the two together, posted on both of their pages. From here, they both gained massive attention, with Trainor garnering 15 million views in her first TikTok featuring Olsen.
Around June of 2022, Olsen took charge of Trainor’s media presence. He’s responsible for curating her content, suggesting TikTok ideas and appearing frequently in her videos posted to the app. Although from the outside this may appear as a random matching, looking at the details reveals a brilliant PR strategy from Olsen, Trainor and both their teams. Olsen naturally connects with younger viewers on his own TikTok page, and the videos featuring him on Trainor’s page garnered massive attention compared to her other content. Younger people were once again aware of Meghan Trainor as an entity and were beginning to follow her account. Trainor was also preparing for the release of her new album, “Takin’ It Back,” so having an influx of new listeners and fans now was imperative to her success. So, Chris Olsen was put on Meghan Trainor’s payroll, launching her TikTok following to 15.4 million, with all her TikTok’s reaching anywhere from two to 20 million views.
This impressive maneuver by Olsen and Trainor may have saved her career, as well as given Olsen a steady paycheck in the face of an unstable influencer environment. In the future, do not be surprised to see more mainstream celebrities team up with influencers following Trainor and Olsen’s success. We are living in the Meghan Trainor renaissance.