Album A Day: Avril Lavigne – Let Go

A sampling from the TJ “Dude…seriously?” collection. Yes, seriously.

I’ve had this album in my collection since right around the time it first came out. Remember that when Avril first came out with “Complicated” she had a fairly high ceiling. The whole female punk-rock, girl-wearing-a-tie thing was actually somewhat groundbreaking back in 2002, and everyone was willing to give the girl a shot. And if Avril had faded into anonymity after releasing Let Go, music fans would have a vastly different view of her than they actually do.

Let Go is a good, not great, debut album whose biggest flaw was the way it was presented. This came out back in the era of Total Request Live where they played most of, if not all of, the music videos in their countdown, so when “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” (whose video has apparently been wiped from existence) came out, we saw a  punk-rock-esque female who could appeal to both sexes and wasn’t completely awful. Let Go in reality was less a pop-punk album and more a pop album. In her debut, Lavigne had much more in common with fellow Canadian Alanis Morrisette than her future husband’s band Sum 41. Regardless, Let Go was a fun record that showed an incredible amount of potential for Avril to stretch out to any number of styles and genres.

Fast forward to the latter half of the 2000s and Avril Lavigne is either a guilty pleasure or a punchline. Her work following that smart, enjoyable debut has sunk to lowest-common-denominator pop. Lyrics like “Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated/Acting like you’re somebody else, makin’ me frustrated” which at least show some level of thought have been replaced by “Hey hey, you you, I don’t like your girlfriend”. Avril and her bank account probably don’t worry about it much, but this blogger and others have probably stopped to wonder what might have been.

Avril Lavigne – Sk8er Boi [iTunes] (YSI)
(Judge me all you want, no apologies for this one…this song is just too damned much fun)

==TJ==