Avril Lavigne, with Chad Kroeger; streaming at youtube.com
The new single from the Here's to Never Growing Up singer is an all-purpose power ballad suitable for everyone from Celine to Creed to Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.
In this case, it is Lavigne who emotes herself right out of her black eye shadow, with vocal help from her Nickelback husband, Chad Kroeger.
It's a standard-issue, minor-key rafter-reacher about letting go of the past. This is a chronic concern of therapists and source of confusion for Lavigne, whose first album was Let Go and who once sang Keep Holding On.
Oddly, though the new tune's title is Let Me Go, the chorus is "let it go." By the end of the song, she's found love again, vowing: "Won't let you go, don't let me go." For all this, she deserves to go directly to songwriter's jail – do not pass go.