Avril Lavigne was born on September 27, 1984, in Belleville, Ontario. Raised in nearby Napanee, she began performing locally before developing the guitar driven songs that became her introduction to an international audience. Her 2002 debut, Let Go, paired teenage relationship stories with pop hooks and rock arrangements, led by “Complicated.”
Her first opportunities came through country music and community performances. Her father played bass in a church band and converted the family basement into a studio, giving her somewhere to develop her interest in music. She sang covers at fairs and other local events while beginning to write songs of her own. In 1999, a radio singing contest put her onstage with Shania Twain at Ottawa’s Corel Centre, where they performed “What Made You Say That.”
A recording contract followed, but finding the right material took more work. Early sessions in New York did not fully reflect her growing interest in rock. In Los Angeles, she found collaborators who helped her pursue that direction. Producer Clif Magness cowrote songs for Let Go, while the Matrix team of Lauren Christy, Graham Edwards and Scott Spock worked with her on five tracks, including “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi.”
Those songs gave Lavigne room to sing about insecurity, attraction and the frustration of watching someone pretend to be somebody else. Looking back in a 2022 interview with Variety, she connected the album’s writing to her first experiences with crushes and boyfriends. She also described her baggy clothes and presentation as choices that came naturally. The teenager in the videos resembled the person writing the songs, and she wanted the music to remain the focus.
By her second album, Under My Skin, released in 2004, Lavigne had changed her working circle. Chantal Kreviazuk became her main writing partner, and Kreviazuk’s husband, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida, produced part of the record. Lavigne stayed at their California home during recording, putting the work inside a friendship that extended beyond scheduled studio sessions.
The collaboration also arrived while Lavigne was defending her contribution to her own records. Speaking to the Associated Press in 2004, she stressed that songwriting had been part of her life before her recording contract. “I am a writer,” she said. Kreviazuk described an artist actively directing the work and closely involved in the writing process.
Guitar was only one of her tools. In a 2006 interview with Yamaha’s All Access magazine, Lavigne explained that she also wrote at the piano and sometimes moved between instruments when a song needed a different approach. She had taken piano lessons as a child, while learning guitar without a teacher. That flexibility extended to performing: she valued stripped down arrangements because they allowed listeners to hear the song and vocal with less surrounding production.
Her later recordings moved between those different approaches. After the ballads of 2019’s Head Above Water, she wanted a more direct rock record. For Love Sux, she worked with Travis Barker, Mod Sun and John Feldmann, describing the sessions to Variety as an opportunity to make music with fellow performers without overthinking the process. “I need a ballad break,” she recalled deciding.
Released on February 25, 2022, Love Sux became her seventh studio album and her first for Barker’s DTA Records. Its 12 tracks included appearances by Mark Hoppus, Machine Gun Kelly and blackbear, completing the return to guitar driven material she had set out to make.
