A love letter to Avril Lavigne
SOMETIMES I GET SO WEIRD I EVEN FREAK MYSELF OUT!!!
It’s a rainy, spring night in May 2023 and I’m at Ally Pally waiting for the first of two sold out shows which will conclude the European & UK leg of Avril’s Bite Me tour. I’m feeling nostalgic. On route my two pals and I have been reminiscing about listening to Avril in our schooldays, a time that holds difficult and painful memories for each of us. My friend tells us, his voice rising with beautiful honesty, “that album reminds us of having no friends”. We’re talking about Avril’s Let Go, her explosive, instant smash of a debut that gave us some of her most revered songs, songs we will all scream/sing every word to over the next few hours.
Let Go is a special album. In recent years I’ve started affectionately referring to it as one of my “top ten life altering albums”. As the show opens bombarding my eyes, ears and beat loving body with visuals of Avril in all her earliest iterations, at the core of which is the iconic artwork from the now 20-year-old Let Go, I am transported to my childhood living room. It’s sometime in the early noughties, my sister and I are recreating the skatepark from the Sk8er Boi video in our Dad’s living room. The cream leather sofas become skate ramps, we strum our air guitars, bang our heads and blast the video as loud as the TV will go. We fling ourselves around, jumping on and off the sofas, mimicking the stunts Avril and her mates pull on screen. Back then, I love Sk8er Boi with the kind of obsessive energy we’d now describe as “stan energy”. It’s the kind of song that’s lyrics will be seared onto my brain for the rest of my life. I can never not know the words, I can never NOT singalong anytime I hear it.
Back in the crowd at Ally Pally I’m overcome with anticipation. The video clips and visuals being played across three gigantic screens flanking the sides of the stage and filling the entire back portion of it are accompanied by snippets from Bad Reputation, a Joan Jett song covered by Avril. Reputation, a word that threads Joan Jett through Avril Lavigne to Taylor Swift in my personal musical geography. In that split second I realise how much THAT Taylor era has perhaps borrowed from this moment of Avril’s.
I’m struck by the sight of a teenage Avril stood in the middle of the road, arms crossed in her baggy trousers and long cardigan, her piercing, heavily lined eyes looking just over my shoulder. There’s something about her youth, her stare and the angst that drips from the cover that makes my heart ache for teenage me. In that moment I realise how special the next hour is going to be. It’s the first time I’ve seen Avril live. I only bought my ticket the day before the gig, after an obsessive and frantic search. Tickets were in such high demand on twickets I missed countless singles within seconds of them being posted. When I finally got my hands on one it felt like such an accomplishment. The day of the show I listen to as much Avril as I can, reminding myself of every era, making sure I give her latest album a couple of listens as I expect she’ll play plenty of her new songs. But, as is always the case, when I listen to Avril, I’m pulled back to Let Go. It’s a cornerstone for me, a benchmark, a musical moment on which so much turns in terms of my love for Avril but also, my love for myself.
Avril opens her set with Bite Me, the title track from her latest album and the namesake for this tour. It’s fun, my body fizzes with excitement and I bop along to the beat with all the other nostalgic (I’m guessing!) 30 something year olds. The setlist is a pitch perfect, triumphant romp through the back catalogue including bangers What the Hell, Complicated and My Happy Ending. Every song awakens memories whilst at the same time making new ones.
When we reach the climax of the whole thing, Sk8er Boi, I’m convinced that for 3 minutes and 24 seconds I actually AM 13 years old again. As the DA DAAAA DA DAAAA, DA DAAAA DA DAAAA guitar riff opens, I catch my pal’s eye and we are both grinning from ear to ear. It’s a wonderful kind of catharsis to experience a beloved song live, for the first time, as an adult. Memories flood my body and they are the visceral kind, the vast expansive ones that present as feelings rather than specific events or things. I remember feeling so so alone, listening to Let Go, one of only a handful of CDs I carried around with my walkman, on repeat between classes at school. Now, at Ally Pally, as I jump with my pals, all of us beaming, I’m grateful for the new memory we are creating. One to be added to the vault in my brain to be unlocked at the sound of the DA DAAAA DA DAAAA, DA DAAAA DA DAAAA guitar riff some time in ten, twenty or thirty years from now. I already can’t wait to remember this moment.
To sign off, here is a playlist of my Avril faves, made during the week of the gig! Happy listening and thank you so much for reading xxx