Sometimes, music's biggest trailblazers are the least willing. Ozzy Osbourne made a point of saying he "never felt comfortable" being called a heavy metal artist. Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello once outright apologised for influencing the nu metal explosion of the 90s.
And so, when Avril Lavigne kicked down the door for women in pop punk in the early 2000s, we shouldn't judge her too harshly for insisting she had piss all to do with punk at all.
"Maybe I have an attitude and a lot more edge to myself than a lot of other artists out there, and the media sees that and takes that and calls it punk," she stated in 2002. "Punk is a little delinquent. Punk is so much that at this moment I'm not gonna get into, but I'm not a punk rocker. I don't make punk music. Maybe I have some punk characteristics about me, but I don't walk around calling myself punk.
"It's more punk to tell people you're not punk, than to sit there and say you are punk," she insisted. "Whatever. If you want to know what I think I am...I think that I'm just a rock chick. I like to rock out. I like to throw shit around. I like to go nuts. I like to lose myself on stage. I like to scream, holler, break things, yell. I like to get my anger out."
By that point, Avril's status as the reigning princess of pop punk was already out of her hands. Her debut album Let Go had turned her into a near-overnight sensation, striking a chord with young pop fans around the world who had stumbled across the gateway record that'd turn them onto guitar music. It'd eventually go on to sell over 16 million copies worldwide, peaking at number two on the US Billboard 200 and crowning Avril as the younger ever female artist to have landed a UK number one album.
All in all, it was an incredible turn of events for a fresh-faced teenager from the modest town of Belleville in Ontario, Canada. Just a few short years before she was suddenly one of the biggest music stars on Planet, Earth, Avril was singing at her local church - and being mercilessly teased by her siblings for it.
"My bother and sister used to make fun of me and say when I sang, my nostrils would flare," she told Bang Showbiz in 2011. "My brother used to knock on the wall because I used to sing myself to sleep and he thought it was really annoying."
My bother and sister used to make fun of me when I sang.
Avril Lavigne
Luckily, she had someone in the family in her corner: her mother Judith, who firmly believed she was destined for great things. As the matriarch of a devout Christian household, belief carried a long way.
"My mom said when I was two I came back from church singing Jesus Loves Me and she knew I was going to be a singer then," Avril recalled. "She called me her little songbird. So yeah, I always wanted to be a singer."
Avril got her first taste of the big time in 1999 when, at just 14 years old, she won a competition to sing with country-pop megastar Shania Twain in front of over 20,000 people at a concert in Ottawa. By the end of 2000, she had signed her first record deal with Arista. And yet, it'd be another 18 months before she'd launch the single that'd change her life.
Once work officially started on Avril's debut album in the spring of 2001, she found herself holed up with various label personnel, producers and songwriters for months on end, all working to try and nail the sound that'd set her apart in a rapidly-changing music climate. For some reason, and despite Avril's clear talents as a singer and songwriter, things weren't quite clicking.
"When we started, she was a sixteen-year-old girl with a voice and someone else’s songs and it took a while," Arista A&R Joshua Sarubin told Hit Quarters in 2003. "We worked for several months in New York with different co-writers just trying to find her sound."
Finally, Arista brought in The Matrix, the emerging songwriting trio of Lauren Christy, Scott Spock and Graham Edwards, who had penned tracks for Ronan Keating and Christina Aguilera and who'd go on to collaborate with everyone from Busted to Korn.
"We'd been listening to the kind of stuff Avril had been doing - it had a Faith Hill kind of vibe, and as soon as she walked in the door we knew this was just wrong," Lauren told Sound On Sound in 2006. "This kid had melted toothbrushes up her arm, her hair was in braids and she wore black skater boots. She didn't seem like the Faith Hill type."
This kid wore black skater boots. She didn't seem like the Faith Hill type.
Lauren Christy
"We knew exactly what to do with Avril," she added. "After that initial meeting, we said 'OK, come back tomorrow,' and we came up with Complicated."
An angsty, earwormy pop-rock anthem, Complicated was an instant hit with Josh Sarubin and the Arista big wigs, leaving Avril to help flesh out the song with a universal theme that everyone can rally around: people being frustrating dickheads.
"One day, I was just fed up with the way people act and how life is," Avril explained in a Boxset interview in 2002. "People bother me how they're not real and being two-faced, acting like they're someone else...you totally get it in this industry.
"So I was just really sick of all that stuff and needed to write about it, needed to get it out. I think it's a song that people can really relate to."
She wasn't kidding. Once Avril had a full album ready to go, a backing band was amassed from alumni of the Canadian punk rock scene (there's that punk word again!), and Complicated was picked as the record's obvious lead single. Upon its release on March 11, 2002, it became one of the biggest hits of the year, hitting the top three both in the US and the UK and even topping the charts in Avril's native Canada.
Its video, featuring Avril and her bandmates causing friendly havoc in a shopping mall in LA, was directed by brother duo The Malloys, who had shot music vids for Foo Fighters and Blink-182 and have since collaborated with Metallica, Justin Timberlake and the Black Eyed Peas. It dominated Kerrang! TV and MTV2, firmly establishing Avril as the new face of adolescent rock angst - within weeks of the video dropping, you could hardly move for teenage girls mooching around town centres dressed in arm socks and loose-fitting neck ties.
Of course, not everyone was impressed. Avril's association with a pop songwriting team drew sneery reactions from much of the traditional rock scene, while rock magazine powerhouse Kerrang! chose to ignore her entirely - despite their TV wing being one of her biggest cheerleaders.
“Having seen some of the dire ‘grunge’ bands pushed by major label record companies in the wake of the success of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, the team at Kerrang! were perhaps overly sensitive to the possibility of being tricked into championing ‘manufactured’ rock artists to a readership which took authenticity very seriously," reflects Louder Contributing Editor Paul Brannigan, who worked as Features Editor at Kerrang! at the time and would eventually take over as Editor.
"The emergence, from nowhere, of a major label 'sk8er girl', signed by LA Reid, who’d signed Usher and TLC, with songs co-written by the same pop songwriters who worked with Ronan Keating and Christina Aguilera, seemed to good to be true, and set alarm bells ringing."
Ironically, it was actually the 'manufactured' side of Avril's early career that caused her the most frustration, as she found herself battling with producers and label execs alike over the direction her career should take.
"It’s difficult to be a woman and to be heard, and people sometimes don’t take you seriously,” she told The Guardian“ in 2019. "I’m highly intuitive and I’ve always got a very strong gut feeling. I’ve always felt that I’ve known what’s best for me to do and I’ve had to fight different people on this journey."
I always loved the pop-rock thing. I’m still proud of those songs.
Avril Lavigne
“I would get some songs the style I really wanted,” she added. “I always loved the pop-rock thing and it’s still who I am. I’m still proud of those songs."
While it was undoubtedly the likes of Sk8er Boi and Girlfriend that did the most to grant Avril her 'pop punk princess' moniker (whether she actually wanted it or not), Complicated was the song that put her on the map, and helped change the narrative on just how successful female-driven rock music could be in the New Millennium - even Paramore's Hayley Williams told Fader in 2017: “I don’t think I would’ve been signed if Avril hadn’t happened."
"While rock mags pretty much ignored Avril, Kerrang! TV and radio championed every single," acknowledges Paul Brannigan today. "It very quickly became evident that this was a major new star who meant every bit as much to her audience as Metallica or Nirvana or Korn meant to other rock fans - whether the rock press liked it or not.”
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