My new found love for little Miss Lavigne shows the true power of a brilliant pop song. Or perhaps just the supreme excellence of Swedish songwriters! I have had a grudge with Avril since she became popular with Complicated, while superior pop-rockers such as Michelle Branch and Amy Studt underperformed, and all their subsequent releases were seen as Avril-wannabes, despite them actually having been around before her. I mocked Avril for her true country-ness (she was originally signed after winning a contest to perform with Shania Twain – a true punk-rocker!) and laughed when, even with a rock band frontman husband, she seemed to have turned into a nice little housewife with The Best Damn Thing’s lead single Keep Holding On.
Then I heard Girlfriend. It was written by Dr. Luke (Max Martin’s writing partner, whose amazing credits are listed here) and sounded like Shebang, Kim-Lian and all sorts of other ridiculously fun kiddy-pop girl acts. It was full of energy and sillyness, and soon I found myself forgiving Avril for being evil (don’t worry, I still have P!nk and Kelly Clarkson to offload my girl-rocker hate onto), and bopping around my room to the sounds of “hey! hey! you! you!” and other such cheerleader-type chants. When the album leaked I downloaded it straight away, and now here I am writing a review.
If I was expecting an album full of tracks as ace as Girlfriend, I would have been sorely disappointed, but I haven’t forgotten the fact that Avril has been decidedly mediocre for the majority of her career until now. With the demise of Fefe and Lillix, we do need some cheeky girl power pop-rock, and this CD does provide it in spades. The Best Damn Thing (written by the ace Butch Walker) is a lot like Girlfriend, but doesn’t pack the same punch, probably because it is just like an inferior rip-off version, although it’s still one of the best tracks and has an ace cheerleader spelling out section. Runaway is also quite a good quality track a la Sk8r Boi, Everything Back But You (another Butch creation) is a bit early No Doubt-ish and Keep Holding On has slightly embarrassingly really grown on me. In fact I like pretty much all the tracks, even the ones not written by our genius Swede.
Pre-teen girls will have great fun with this CD, but I don’t think I’ll personally be playing it anywhere near as much as Fefe Dobson’s Sunday Love which I finally recently obtained in full. I guess the difference in their success just proves how useful it is to be blonde and stick-thin in the music industry, even when singing “Hell yeah, I’m the mother-fucking princess”.