Avril Lavigne and the Return of Pop Rock

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The crossover period of the late 90s and early 2000s was dominated by highly commercialised, bubblegum pop from singers like Britney and Xtina. These contradictory images of sweet, young girls who were both virginal yet highly sexualised became the dominant archetype of what a girl should be. Then Avril Lavigne came along. 

When Avril Lavigne’s debut album Let Go was released in 2002, I was obsessed. Who wasn’t? The image of this baggy-clothed and heavy eye make-up-wearing teen struck a chord that I still struggle to articulate. Avril wasn’t afraid to irritate people; to call a person out, to tell a boy to fuck off, to be angry when she was angry, and to sing about it to the whole world in a way that her contemporaries seemed to veer away from. 

To a young, socially awkward girl who felt like she was too nerdy to be a Spears style starlet, desperate not to fall out with anyone but internally very angry about the ongoings in her personal life that she wouldn’t begin to unpick until 2018, Avril was everything. 

I wasn’t alone either, when she arrived on the scene Avril became everything to a lot of young girls and women. Her brand of pop-rock, grunge-inspired music was teeming with emotion: Whether it's the emotional angst of My Happy Ending or the upbeat, carefree spirit of My World, Avril continuously rejected what was the dominant feminine image that many young girls felt we would be pushed to become, opting to instead embrace accepting her own self. In turn, telling us we could do the same. The irony is I, and many others, modelled ourselves on Avril to every extent in an effort to become our most ‘genuine’ selves. I’m not sure we would’ve chosen to wear ties with vest tops otherwise. 

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Avril Lavigne provided us with an emotional outlet we craved. It’s because of this that when her sound and aesthetic changed with the release of her third studio album, 2007’s Best Damn Thing, instead of accepting that fact that she’d changed since debuting at 18, the conspiracy theory that she had died and been replaced by a body double, Melissa Vandella, become more widespread.    

This evolution meant that we could no longer create an identity of ourselves through the medium of Avril. The fact that she wasn’t the same as before felt akin to a betrayal because we’d pinned our whole identity on her Let Go and Under My Skin eras. 

In turn, it meant that we had to accept that with each year we too would change. It would no longer be enough for me to spend hours in the library printing poster after poster of her to then paste on my wall as though it were wallpaper. It would no longer be enough for me to imagine that the walls of my box room weren’t there and instead was an audience of adoring fans screaming the lyrics to Complicated as I performed. Though it may sound strange, that was a scary prospect to an 11-year-old girl. It was a good lesson to learn in the long-term.

It’s no surprise that Lavigne’s pop-rock legacy lives in today’s musical landscape. Female musicians today such as Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Willow, Rina Sawayama and more incorporate elements of the 2002 pop-rock world in the music they create today.Other than outright citing the Canadian musician’s influence like Billie Eilish has on numerous occasions, like in this 2019 interview with W Magazine. 

Willow’s Lately I Feel EVERYTHING LP could have been mistaken for an album released in 2002 rather than 2021, and she even collaborated with Lavigne on the track GROW. Further still, Olivia Rodrigo’s release good 4 u, is reminiscent of Lavigne’s 2004 tracks He Wasn’t and I Always Get What I Want, albeit with a slower tempo.

However, the genre has gone one step further, becoming more inclusive and diverse than ever before. When Avril rose to fame the genre she spearheaded was nonetheless dominated by white men, despite others like Skunk Anansie creating brilliant music that fell under the title of pop rock. This shift demonstrates the effect that streaming music online, and the internet in general, has had on the industry. 

The streaming services have allowed for greater freedom of choice when it comes to who and what genre they listen to. Information is more readily accessible about the music industry, lifting that once impenetrable fortress between the fan and the industry machine. Where once the widespread belief that Elvis Presley pioneered rock music was viewed as solid fact, today a simple Google search can tell the names of at least four Black artists and musicians including Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Little Richard who pioneered the genre in the 1940s and 50s. 

Plus the plethora of choice has loosened this titanium grip that studios once had when it came to promoting their artists. No longer are we directed to listen to something, by either radio DJs and the charts, rather we choose what we want to listen to which has enabled Black and other non-white artists to create their own following on their terms. However, there is still a long way to go when it comes to inclusivity in both the industry and the pop-rock genre and this change will not happen overnight.

This cultural return to the pop-rock genre evokes a sense of nostalgia. Just as if I was listening to Let Go or Under My Skin, images of my past self flash up in my mind when I listen to Beabadoobee or Lavigne’s recent track Bite Me. Much like the escapism of Cottagecore during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the popular revival of pop-rock taps into a desire for escapism - this time instead of baking sourdough bread, we’re piercing our own ears. 

The need to escape stems from the narrowing of future prospects for those in the millennial and Gen Z categories. I’m now 26, I have to pay rent and with the rapidly increasing cost of living in the UK and, so far, lack of wage increases to match that, who knows whether I’ll ever have disposable income in this economy and be able to save. Millennials in particular are less likely to own a home compared to previous generations and more likely to experience a drop in standard of living when we retire which, let’s face it, will probably be when we’re eighty. Our generations were some of the most affected by unemployment brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

2022 is being named the year of the squeeze and the cost of living in the UK has become the highest it's been in 30 years. Think tanks such as the Resolution Foundation describe Spring 2022 as a “cost of living catastrophe”. With our present being so stark, the untempered anger of early 2000s pop-rock enables us to unleash our emotions more so than other genres. We’re still just as angry with the unfairness of the world as we were back then - if anything, we’re more pissed off now.

Words: Eleanor Forrest