Singer, songwriter
In 2002 an eighteen-year-old Canadian newcomer named Avril Lavigne swept
on to the U.S. music scene with her debut disc,
Let Go.
By the end of the year, three singles from the album, including
"Complicated," broke into the top ten of the Billboard
charts, and
Let Go
was the second best-selling CD of the year. Lavigne's music scored
high with fans and critics, but so did her personal style, which consisted
of wearing loose pants, tank tops, and neckties. As a result, she sparked
a fashion trend and was heralded in the press as a
"skater-punk," an alternative to pop princesses, like
Britney Spears (1981–), whose look and videos had started to become
increasingly more provocative. In May 2004 Lavigne released her second
album,
Under My Skin,
which debuted at number one not only in the United States, but also in
many other countries, including Germany, Spain, and Japan. By the end of
2005 Avrilmania was showing no signs of
slowing—Lavigne was performing to sold-out crowds on an extended
concert tour and in April she took home top honors at the Juno Awards,
which are considered to be the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Grammy
Awards.
Not a girlie-girl
Avril Ramona Lavigne was born on September 27, 1984, in Belleville, a
small city in the eastern part of the province of Ontario, Canada. The
second of three children, her father, John, was a technician for Bell
Canada; mother Judy was a stay-at-home mom. When Lavigne was five, the
family moved to Napanee, a farming town even smaller than Belleville with
a total population of only five thousand. From the time she was a toddler
Lavigne idolized her older brother, Matt, and insisted on trying to do
anything he could do. As she explained to Chris Willman of
Entertainment Weekly,
"Ifhe played hockey, I had to play hockey. He played baseball, I
wanted to." In fact, when Lavigne was ten she played in the Napanee
boy's hockey league; she also became known as quite a baseball
pitcher.
As she grew older Lavigne gained a reputation as a tomboy who preferred
family outings like dirt biking or camping over dating. And in the tenth
grade she discovered skateboarding, which became a particular passion.
"I'm just not a girlie-girl," Lavigne laughingly told
Willman. When not playing sports, however, she did pursue another
interest—singing. The Lavignes were devout Christians and attended
Evangel Temple in Napanee, where young Avril sang in the choir beginning
at age ten. Soon she branched out and began singing at all types of
venues, including county fairs, hockey games, and company parties. She
primarily sang covers of songs made popular by
"Why should I care what other people think of me? I am who I am.
And who I wanna be."
country singers Martina McBride (1966–) and Faith Hill
(1967–). Lavigne's parents bought her a sound machine to
sing along with, and she practiced in front of a mirror at home for hours.
In 1998, when she was fourteen years old, Lavigne's first manager,
Cliff Fabri, discovered her singing at a small performance in a local
bookstore. When talking to Willman, Fabri described the young girl as a
"frizzy-haired waif." But he liked Lavigne's voice,
and he was especially impressed by her confident attitude. That same year,
such confidence helped her win a contest to sing a duet with fellow
Canadian Shania Twain (1965–) at the jam-packed Corel Centre in
Ottawa. Even though it was her first time performing in front of twenty
thousand people, Lavigne was fearless. As she told Willman, "I
thought, 'This is what I'm going to do with my
life."'