Avril Lavigne and Authenticity
Is she the real deal?
Nearly two decades have passed since Avril Lavigne’s debut single, but one can still run across people questioning her credentials as an artist. Is she punk? Is she any good? Is she authentic? I’m a fan, but I don’t think the answer to all those questions is necessarily yes.
The Pop Punk Princess
I was living in Sapporo, Japan in the early aughts when pop punk exploded. Every time I turned on MTV Japan, it was to Blink-182, Sum 41 and Good Charlotte. Like their forebears (and contemporaries) Offspring and Green Day, they sneered at society but not too viciously, had a relentless sense of humor, and knew how to write tight, catchy songs. Into this scene rolled 17-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne with her debut album Let Go (2002) and a handful of irresistible and inescapable hits.
First was “Complicated,” but the one etched most deeply into music history’s collective consciousness is “Sk8er Boi.” The lyrics spin a tale of a punk boy with a crush on a prissy girl who won’t lower herself to his level, so he ends up with the song’s narrator, who’s much cooler. In the music video, Lavigne and her bros skateboard and bike around places they shouldn’t, run across the tops of cars, and eventually hold up traffic with a street performance. “Sk8er Boi” is unforgettable flash fiction in song and it slapped a sticker reading “PUNK” right across Lavigne’s crinkly forehead.
But punk is one of those genres that seems to require credentials. To many, punk isn’t just a style of music, it’s an ethos. It’s the sound of rebellion, so if you’re pleasing the status quo, you’re doing it wrong. Hardcore punk and anarcho-punk devotees want it angry and raw enough to make upstanding citizens and casual music fans worry for their safety. From the perspective of The Clash and The Sex Pistols, Crass and Chaos A.D., The Avengers and The Distillers, Avril Lavigne and other pop punk bands can look like posers getting rich off an oxymoronic subgenre.
Back then, however, pop punk carried a touch of authenticity. Many people primarily encountered music through radio and MTV, which were increasingly shoving aside grunge and other alternative music in favor of P. Diddy-manufactured hip-hop and the worst habits of pop as exemplified by Britney Spears. New movements in punk and rock, the latter via the post-punk revival and garage rock revival, were a welcome countercultural intrusion to the mainstream.
“‘Sk8er Boi’ is unforgettable flash fiction in song and it slapped a sticker reading ‘PUNK’ right across Lavigne’s crinkly forehead.”
Lavigne’s third album, however, only further hurt her with skeptics. The first single off The Best Damn Thing (2007) was “Girlfriend,” about a girl who tries to steal a cool dude from his snooty girlfriend. Narratively, it’s a variation on “Sk8er Boi,” but musically it’s pure bubble-gum bounce without a whiff of punk. In the video, there’s a goofy dance routine, a candy shop of color and a literal fun park, and as I stood agape in Target watching the video for the first time on a giant TV, I couldn’t help but wonder:
“What the hell happened to Avril Lavigne?”
The Rock Chick
Maybe the problem wasn’t her but the label others applied to her. In interviews on YouTube from early in her career, Lavigne herself explicitly rejects the label of punk, claiming she’s just a “rock chick,” and her second album makes that point better than anything. Under My Skin (2004) had an alternative rock sound that was as immediately palatable to audiences as it was unique to Avril Lavigne, and the ballad “Nobody’s Home” showed she didn’t just have a distinctive voice, she had serious talent in singing.
As Lavigne kept the hits rolling, rockers with established cred were taking note. For her self-titled album released in 2003, alt-rocker and critical darling Liz Phair chose to work with Avril Lavigne producer The Matrix. In songwriting and production, Liz Phair sounds a lot like early Lavigne but with more mature lyrical content. There was talk that Phair had sold out, but I think her fourth is that rare perfect album, and I can’t help but think she chose to emulate Lavigne because she heard something in her peer’s music that was authentic.
The Authentic Artist
But what is authenticity?
When I think of authenticity, I think of philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). For him, it was all about Being, specifically what he called Dasein. In his masterwork Being and Time (1927), he used this German word to mean the specific way that human beings exist. It’s extremely complicated, but in short we are the being that confronts its own being. From Joan Stambaugh’s translation (SUNY, 1996):
“Da-sein is a being which is concerned in its being about that being.”
Most of the time, we’re caught up in the world, lost to ourselves, listening to others (what Heidegger called “the they”), and thereby crimping our possibilities. To a large extent, this is unavoidable, but conscience does call to us, telling us that we aren’t all that we could be:
“Da-sein has always already compared itself, in its being, with a possibility of itself. Being free for its ownmost potentiality-for-being, and thus for the possibility of authenticity and inauthenticity . . . ”
We can be more than we are, but not if we’re busy pleasing others.
In this sense, Lavigne has nailed authenticity. She has maximized her talents in music, dance, fashion, business and philanthropy. She has set trends and bucked them, and she has redefined herself for herself, all while under enormous pressure to conform to the expectations and demands of industry professionals, music critics, misguided social justice warriors and pissy dudes on social media. In other words, she told the they that it can kiss her ass.
This doing-her-own-thing has continued throughout her discography, often to lyrics expressly about authenticity and to new musical styles. Goodbye Lullaby (2011) is notable for its warm acoustic numbers and dramatic symphonic numbers, and her self-titled 2013 release incorporates country, metal and electronic. The only release I don’t all-out love is 2018’s Head Above Water, which shifts toward contemporary R&B. But I don’t have to love it. Of greater importance is that the artist is making the music that she wants to make.
Avril Lavigne is authentic precisely because of her penchant for not living up to others’ standards. She’s been hinting at new music since late last year, and if the past is any indication, the new album will be the perfect pop package with a few surprises.
