“No one was seeing eye to eye.”
Avril Lavigne is on the phone from Calgary, speaking about the rough experiences involved in making her latest album, Goodbye Lullaby, released after much delay last March.
“There was a lot of fighting and going back and forth,” she continues. “I don’t think it was good for the record or for me and the creative process.”
The album’s contrasting styles suggest the source of her frustration. Swedish pop maestro Max Martin (who cashes cheques signed by people named Britney, Ke$ha and Pink) collaborated on four bubble-gummed tracks, including the bratty lead single, What the Hell.
Lavigne, coming off a divorce with Sum 41 rocker Deryck Whibley, resisted what she saw as her label’s desire for more rhythmic material. She instead wanted songs that were personal and acoustic, with her voice higher in the mix. We hear that on the strummed Wish You Were Here and the album-closing Goodbye, a poignant ballad written and produced by Lavigne. “I did my best,” she says. “And it’s all good now.”
Or is it? In some Canadian cities, Lavigne’s current Black Star tour has been drawing pitifully small audiences – an estimated 4,000 (mostly) kids and mothers at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Oct. 3, and 6,000 at Calgary’s Saddledome this week. Those are cavernous arenas that can hold several times that many concertgoers. Some of the reviews have been harsh, too, asking when Lavigne, the 27-year-old pop star who once skateboarded the friendly streets of Napanee, Ont., was finally going to grow up.
It’s a good question. She is trying to mature, it appears, but her (now former) record label, RCA, didn’t seem to have much interest in seeing Lavigne outgrow her snotty Sk8er Boi image. Something like last year’s Alice in Wonderland soundtrack song, Alice – an emotive ballad in the style of Chantal Kreviazuk – is the path the singer-songwriter would herself like to follow.
Major labels, though, aren’t generally in the business of fostering careers. They mine the trends, loving the pop-sexy, not the long-term artistry. It’s the business.
But if growing old with your audience is challenging, it’s not impossible. In the industry, it’s called “pulling a George Michael,” a reference to the British singer’s jump from bleach-blond Wham! singer to the more mature artist who made Faith and Freedom. The video for the latter was clear in its message: To create a fresh new image, you have to do some tearing down and blowing up.
Thing is, it might be too late for Lavigne. “I’ll win the race, keep up with the pace,” she sings on Alice. But Lavigne is stuck in limbo, in danger of being left behind altogether. On tour and on her new album, she’s playing to children even as she attempts to grow up. Like Alice, one pill makes her smaller while the other one makes her tall.
“I think she’s stuck,” says Eric Alper, a veteran of the industry, who looks after media relations and label acquisitions at eOne Music Canada, a leading record distributor. “She’s stuck in an area, knowing why people liked her in the past, and she’s not leaving that area.” Alper and eOne tend to work with older, established artists. “She needs to do what she wants to do,” he advises, “but I don’t think she’s there yet.”
Lavigne exploded in 2002 as a 17-year-old pop-punk princess with her album Let Go and its breakthrough single, Complicated. Her follow-up records, Under My Skin and The Best Damn Thing, sold awfully well. She has diversified into fragrances and fashion. She’s massive in Asia.
