Avril Lavigne released “Bite Me” on November 10, 2021, making her debut on Travis Barker’s DTA Records. Co-produced by Barker, John Feldmann and Mod Sun, the single packed its breakup message into two minutes and 39 seconds. Barker also played drums, with Feldmann supplying guitar and bass.
In the release announcement, Lavigne called the song “an anthem about knowing your worth, what you deserve, and not giving someone a second chance who doesn’t deserve you.” The Hannah Lux Davis-directed video arrived two days later, with Barker joining Lavigne and a crew of men in tutus as they confront an ex-boyfriend.
Barker’s involvement grew out of work they were already doing together. Announcing Lavigne’s signing in 2021, he said their studio sessions earlier that year had been so enjoyable that he wanted her on the label. Lavigne pointed back to their first collaboration on The Best Damn Thing. By the time she joined DTA, they had spent substantial time writing songs and developing the new record together.
She’d also reached a point where she wanted to make an upbeat guitar record on her own terms. In a 2022 interview with GRAMMY.com, Lavigne contrasted that intention with the emotional ballads on 2019’s Head Above Water. She said she began the new album without a label or managers, giving her room to follow that direction. The lyrics drew on a breakup and on earlier relationships she had time to reconsider during the pandemic. Anger wasn’t the whole picture, though. She wanted the songs to carry her sense of humor, and she described working with Mod Sun and Feldmann as an easy fit between musicians who understood the same style.
With Feldmann, she found a collaborator who moved at her speed. Lavigne told Forbes in February 2022 that they could write a song and record it in a day. That pace suited her preference for getting ideas down while the inspiration was fresh. She was accustomed to asking producers to replay parts or adjust the distortion; Feldmann’s guitar choices already matched what she wanted to hear.
The process with Barker took a different shape. She described writing at home to tracks he sent, then taking those ideas into his studio, where they worked on lyrics and finished songs together. Some songs began with both of them in the room. Across those different approaches, Lavigne said making the record felt like spending time with friends.
The stage was part of her thinking, too. Speaking to SPIN in 2022, Lavigne said she had been imagining the energy of her earlier concerts while making the album. “These songs are so meant for being played live on stage,” she said. That emphasis connects the record’s guitar-driven arrangements to something concrete: the kind of show she wanted to perform.
“Bite Me” became the lead single from Love Sux, released on February 25, 2022. Her seventh studio album expanded the collaboration into a 12-song record and was her first full-length release for DTA.
