Avril Lavigne didn’t mean to start recording a new album. “It just happened,” she says of the still-untitled November 17th release. “I made a record without even feeling like I made a record.”
Sitting in a studio in Tarzana, Calif., with her feet — clad in a pair of vinyl hightops — propped up on a mixing board, the now 24 year old pop-punk princess barely looks a day older than she did when “Complicated” took the airwaves by storm in 2002. “I’m sitting on the piano writing in the foyer, and he’s in the studio, and it’s like, ‘Hey. I like that.’”
“He” is Lavigne’s husband (and Sum 41 frontman) Deryck Whibley, who has used the couple’s home studio to produce eight of the nine tracks she’s recorded so far. “I think this is taking the spirit of what she’s done on previous records so much further,” he says. “It’s way more meaningful, has more of an impact, more emotional. It makes me feel something more than the other stuff. And I wanted to match that musically with the track.”
Lavigne seems thrilled to have such a crack in-house production partner. “He knows me. We spend a lot of time together,” she laughs, in her habitual cackle. “And the cool thing is, if he’s recording something and I don’t like it, I can be like, ‘No, no, no, I don’t like that. More like this.’ Or I can walk in and be like, ‘Love it. Keep going.’”
It was a song snippet called “Black Star” — intended for her fragrance commercial — that launched the recording process back in November; Lavigne played that intro and two complete tracks for EW called “Everybody Hurts” and “Darlin’.” The first has a trademark Lavigne acoustic beginning, then explodes into a loud chorus of “Everybody hurts some days.”
The second is a love song Lavigne wrote when she was 15: “I always really liked this song,” she says, “and I never recorded it.” There are other songs from her past on the record, too, including one she wrote at 17, and one she wrote at 20. “I always had material, but some people that I worked with didn’t really care, because they wanted to write the stuff,” she says, when asked why the tunes haven’t surfaced before. “Some people were just like, ‘Ah, whatever. You’re a little girl. What do you know?’ I know how this works. It’s my fourth record. It’s not rocket science. I think people doubted me before, and I’m finally just like, ‘I’m doing this.’”
Both new tracks also demonstrate quite clearly that the rapping/Toni Basil affliction that plagued 2007’s The Best Damn Thing has left her system, and she’s back to the emo-heavy strengths of her first two albums. “[Best Damn Thing] was intended to be fun, to be rockin’,” she explains. “All I had in my mind was my live show, running around on stage, getting the crowd involved. This record, I just really, really wanted to sing. We started recording each song, some of them, just with acoustic guitar and the vocal and building it from there. It’s stripped down. I love performing that way, so I really felt like it was time to make a record like that. To just make it all about the vocal and the performance, and the vibe, and the emotion.”
She’s thinking about doing a theater tour in support of the new album, so she can bring that emotion directly to the audience. “I just wanna have silence around me, and have these acoustic songs and really deliver,” she says.
There’s more work to be done before the album release, but Lavigne doesn’t seem to be sweating it. “My new word right now is ‘balance,’” she says. “Work hard, play hard. Maybe that should be the album cover: Work Hard, Play Hard…Bitch.” With this, she cracks herself up again. “I swear to God I have not drank anything but green juice today,” she grins. “Why am I acting like this?” Part of it may be that the little sk8er girl is finally growing up, and feels comfortable — and demonstrably happy — making an album that reflects where she is in life right now. “I was always really honest in my lyrics,” she says, “I think more so when I was younger, and now it’s kind of come back to that. Just like, you know what? I’m not trying to write a perfect pop song. I’m just trying to write a song that’s honest right now, even if something sounds weird or a lyric might not make sense to someone.
“I’m turning 25 this year. 25, but not 35! Half of me is really older-acting and the other half is a young spirit. When I’m really old, I think I’ll be crazy, and have a young spirit and be fun. But yeah. I am an adult. But sometimes I still feel like I’m 19.” She guffaws again. “Sometimes I still dress like I’m 19. I don’t think I’ll ever be super mad sophisticated. I think I’ll always be like this.”
Photo credit: Bob Charlotte/PR Photos
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Friendly Fires: Mercury-nomiated Brit rockers debut video for ‘Kiss of Life’
2008 Mercury Prize winners Elbow at the Wiltern in L.A.
Jay-Z debuts “Run This Town” featuring Rihanna, Kanye West
The Script talk about opening for Paul McCartney, U2
Comments (1-30) of 39 Add your comment
AVRIL,YOU ROCK!
This is great news.
But there’s nothing emo on her albuns. Helllooo!
Wow, that girl clearly believes in herself. She’s practically doing the opposite of what every other big popstar is doing right now.
I wish her good luck!
Good on ya, Avril! I love that no matter what she does, she honestly doesn’t care what critics will say – she does what she loves to do, and I admire that!
Looking forward to this next album.
AHHHH!!!!!! I can’t wait!!!! SO excited!!!! I didn’t even hear anything about her new album until today! This is so awesome to hear!! I love Avril, she always has and always will be my idol!! <3
OMG I’m soooo excited that she’s going back to her more heavier emotional stuff……NOT EMO WTF?
this album is gonna be great I know it! i can’t wait till november!!
I like the direction Avril is going with this album. She really does have a great voice and I want to hear more of it, and this album sounds like it will really showcase it for us. I can’t wait. Great article, thanks for posting.
We are waiting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YESS I CNT WAIT 4 HER NEW ALBUM IT WILL BE GREAT!!!! I LOVE AVRIL.
Go Avril
Yay!! I can’t wait for the new albummm!!!
my name is ece. avril ı love you
I love her beautiful voice. This gonna be a awesome record, the best. You rule, Avril!
Omg i can’t wait.I’ve been wondering what Avril had been doing recently.Now we know.Its going to be so good.I love all Avril’s music whether it be pop or heavier and more emotional.Her voice is just so so beautiful.x
Cant wait until november comes..x
So excited.x
Love You Avril.x
I can’t wait to hear her new stuff! I liked Avril’s last album but I’m happy to hear she’s bringing it back to her original sound.
I wonder what the album will be titled…I’m excited! Can’t wait for November 17th when it comes out(according to AVRIL BANDAIDS) AVRIL BANDAIDS…Best AVRIL FAN SITE EVER!
Yeah thats my girl!! She’s gonna BRING IT, baby!
I sure hope her next album will sound more like “Let Go”!
Me too, it was her best album.
She is so bloody insanely awesome it’s bloody insanely awesome. She’s fricking hilarity also xD I’m glad the next album’s gonna be less BDT-y, although I did like that. I love how she’s putting some old songs in there too. But I CAN’T BLOODY WAIT!!!
I have no shame in being a mindless Avril fan. =]
Wow!!! the new album sounds great.
:):)
Avril is just amazing.
I love all her 3 albums and i hope this one is even better than the rest of them.
Estoy entusiassssmadaaaa!!!!!!
omg yeah!!!! new album finally comes out :X i’ve been waiting for that like..2 years !!!!
Wow. That’s great! Actually, I think the first two albums were better, and when this one’s like those.. Well, 4 months! I can’t wait. Go Avril.
this just proves what i’ve told people all along… Avril didnt change.
I LUV U AVRIL!!!
i believe in avril and think her new album is gonna be awesome
she is tru.
go avril!!!
I can’t wait till her album comes out! i bet all the poser wanna be fans arent gonna like it as much as “the best damn thing” since they probably never liked her for her first to albums. Now i get to rub it in my bfs face that she didn’t change!
WOOOO!!! I LOVEEEEE Avril Lavigne soooo much!!! Can’t wait for her next album! It’s gonna be great like all her other albums!!!!
Although I’m the first to say it here, it must be said:
Avril is pure medeocrity – as in, average. The reason why most of you seem hooked on her stuff is because – just like Britney or any other pop star – she keeps getting marketed to you, as a pop product. Devoid of authenticity. And perhaps even more unfortunately, puppeteered by an entourage of stylists, agents, managers and marketers (who happen to script what she ‘decides’ to tell the media).
If you are interested in what *really good* music sounds like, by real ‘honest’ musicians, I would suggest you please educate yourself with some hardworking pop rock artists from the 80s and 90s – from whom Avril draws some obvious influence, but never truly ‘perceives’ – artists such as The Cranberries, Sarah McLachlan, Shania Twain, etc. Just do yourselves a favour and read up/listen to those (not-so-outdated) artists and you will realise Avril owes a great debt to them but cannot hold a candle soundwise!
I said all of this for your benefit. I wish you well in the formation of your taste in pop music.
PS: A surefire way to tell a true muso from a fake one is in the way they talk about their art. By the way Avril constantly gloats and inflates her sense of self importance, you can tell she is rather clueless / ditzy!
When you listen to true musos, however – mainstream success or not, and particularly those with underground cred – you will notice how ego and self-promotion take a backseat because at the end of it all (and this is something both them and their fans know), really, it is is all about the music.
This is not some character attack on Avril I am parlaying here – to me, Avril is just another one of many pawns in the mainstream pop industry (and I’m certain she is fully aware of this). I could have posted my opinion of any other pop puppet (the only reason Avril qualifies for my time in this case is because her supposed ‘authenticity’ is forced, thereby rendering her inauthentic – and this is very transparent to those who choose to expose themselves to more music than whatever happens to hit the charts).
Instead, then – this is an attempt to get you to open your eyes, ears and minds to a wealth of other sounds so that you can truly say you heard ‘great music’. Go out there and expose yourselves to the sounds of hardworking artists (regardless of what decade they may spring from). Reject the latest ‘craze’ presented to you on MTV, as the case may be – and you will find that you are actually exploring a true punk attitude. Give independent artists a chance even if they don’t appear on the Billboard Hot 100 list – you will then also be giving yourself a chance, to appreciate culture and character better. Go and download some classic rock/pop from the past and you will realise you’re not just a casualty of the present. You have a cultural past, and a responsibility for the future. Do it.
Believe me, you will be the better (and happier) for it.
can wait 4 the new album