Avril Lavigne’s New Hit Jumps Backwards

Friday, April 27, 2007

Canadian punk-pop singer Avril Lavigne popped up at #1 this week on Billboard’s Top 200 chart for albums, selling over a quarter of a million copies of her new album, “The Best Damn Thing.” Worldwide, it’s sold over 1.5 million from her previous two successes and from the hit single, “Girlfriend.” Or has it?

The numbers might have been inflated from a sales ploy.  The new album has two versions, the censored and the explicit version.  The cheaper censored version isn’t labeled, so fans are buying the censored version by mistake when they don’t necessarily want the bonus DVD that quietly identifies the explicit version.

She calls the new album easily the best she’s made.  Rolling Stones praises it for its emotion and sass.  On the flip side, some fans have complained about the cursing and brattiness Avril unabashedly adds to this album atop what pulled fans to her to begin with: her sound and her directly honest lyrics.

That hasn’t changed, but the maturity that previously characterized her lyrics has vanished.  The old hit “Complicated” was a critique of social façades.  The new one “Girlfriend” is a girl getting in a guy’s face saying she doesn’t like his girl; she would be so much better.  That’s how far the 22-year-old singer has dropped maturity out the window.

At any rate, she’s still selling.  Time will show how the majority of fans feel about this development in her music.