Avril Lavigne is driven by maturity, not celebrity
"I hate how everyone is so into all those magazines where people just care about what celebrities eat and what they wear and what they're doing. Can't they focus on more than that? How about focusing on poverty and kids that are starving? I hate how people put celebrities on pedestals and I even hate the word celebrity.
"People need to put that energy someplace else and do some good with it," adds Lavigne, a verbal and musical firebrand who performs at the Kiss Concert at the Tweeter Center tomorrow and releases her sophomore album, "Under My Skin," on Tuesday.
Lavigne practices what she preaches. While some of tomorrow's Kiss performers may arrive by limousine, befitting their "celebrity" status, she wouldn't be caught dead in one.
"I never ride in limousines. It's too embarrassing," she says. "I'm never getting in one. I ride SUVs and vans and stuff like that. I'm not getting into a limo. It's cheesy."
Lavigne, a native of Napanee, Ontario, continues her uncompromising ways on her new album. It rocks harder and more seriously than her debut disc, which spun off such hits as "Sk8er Boi" and "Complicated." The first single off the new record is "Don't Tell Me," which commands an overeager boy to keep his hands off of her. "Get out of my head, get off of my bed, yeah, that's what I said/ Did you think I was going to give it up to you this time?" she sings like a young Alanis Morissette ("I love Alanis and think she's inspiring -- her `Jagged Little Pill' is my favorite album," she says).
To put it mildly, Lavigne tells it like it is.
"I think that's good," she says. "I'm honest and that's what this [expletive] world needs -- more people that are honest."
"We're watching her grow right in front of us," says Tom Calderone, executive vice president for MTV and MTV2. "Avril doesn't have to wear a belly shirt or get attention by exploiting her sexuality. She says, `This is who I am. Here's my opinion.' She stands for something and that's good. She's edgy and is no boy toy. She's showing young girls to have respect for themselves."
Lavigne's no-nonsense attitude carried over to the way she told her record label, RCA, to chill out while she was making the new album. While that's commonplace for Bruce Springsteen, Sting, David Bowie, and other heavyweights, it's rare for a 19-year-old to be granted that authority.
"I get right in there and make the decisions. I'm hands-on with everything. . . . I told the label, `I'm going to write the songs and record them and I'll give them to you when I'm ready,' " Lavigne says. "Because I didn't feel like giving them songs every time I wrote one because it would be a distraction. I didn't want to hear anyone's opinions or anything until after -- and they were cool about it. I told them not to call me and ask how I was doing. I said, `Just leave me alone.' "
When your first album sells 14 million copies, who's going to argue?
Lavigne went her own way -- and the results are impressive on the new disc. She's a real rock songwriter, rather than a manufactured pop diva. She wrote a number of songs with fellow Canadian singer Chantal Kreviazuk and one, the hard-hitting "Nobody's Home," with former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody. Most of the songs deal with thorny relationship issues ("He Wasn't," "Forgotten," and "My Happy Ending," which turns out not to have a happy ending). And an absolute gem is the ballad "Slipped Away," about the death of her grandfather. She broke down in tears after recording it in the studio.
The album's melodies still have a guitar-hooky teen sheen -- but make no mistake, this is teen rock, not teen pop. It's something that a young Joan Jett would have been proud of.
And there's plenty of new blood on it. "I wanted to try new people this time," Lavigne says, explaining why she didn't encore with the songwriting team known as the Matrix, which helped on her debut disc. "I wanted to work with rock producers -- somebody like Don Gilmore, because I'd written a bunch of heavier, darker songs and wanted a rock producer to work with them." (Gilmore is known for producing records for Linkin Park, Good Charlotte, and Sugar Ray.)
The new album's increased maturity might come as a surprise -- Lavigne won't turn 20 until Sept. 27 -- but she has a quick explanation for that. "I think it's because of all the travel and the situations that I've been in. A lot has happened in the past two years, let's just say that," she notes.
"I live on my own now, and most of my friends are older than me. Chantal is my best friend and she's 30. And my band is all 24 and 25. And I don't hang out much with people my own age."
Another sign of growth is Lavigne's heightened social consciousness. She is devoted to War Child, a network of organizations helping children who have been victims of war in Iraq, Africa, and elsewhere. She recorded Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" for a compilation CD, "Peace Songs," which aided War Child last year.
"I also plan to do more work for them," she says. "I just think that if I'm in this situation where I have the attention of others -- and a situation where I have a little bit of power -- then I should take advantage of that. And I will." 