LIFESTYLE, TALENT AND FAME
HOTTEST FACES AND BODIES: Avril Lavigne.
"I have been labeled like I'm this angry girl - I'm like, this rebel, I'm like, punk, and I am SO not any of them. It's so funny, and I'm actually really shy," the petite, Canadian-born Lavigne says in typical teenspeak, sitting on a hotel bed wearing a black hooded sweat shirt, greyish pants, boxy shoes and socks bearing the message "boys are dumb." Lavigne the one-dimensional angry rocker chick is just one misconception she hopes to dispel as she releases her second album, Under This Skin, on Tuesday. It's the follow-up to her hugely successful debut, 2002's Let Go. Though she's only 19, Lavigne has had a profound effect on the pop world in her short career. In 2002, most teen female singing stars were little more than sexy nymphets singing prepackaged pop that was neither distinctive nor written by the stars themselves. Along came Lavigne - a brash teen who didn't dye her hair blond, wear tight outfits or bounce to a bubble-gum beat. She played instruments (piano and guitar) and actually was credited with co-writing her own songs. Girls looking for an alternative to Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera flocked to Lavigne. Her album sold more than five million copies and received a slew of Grammy nominations thanks to hits like Sk8er Boi, I'm With You, and Complicated. Though she's not fond of the term, Lavigne became the anti-Britney - and flourished because of it. "I get fan letters like all the time . . . and pretty much every letter just talks about, 'Thank you for not being Britney Spears. I love how you're yourself and you stand up and you're strong,' " she says in a little girl's voice. "I came out and I was myself, dressing, like, my own way." It wasn't just Lavigne's look - today her hair is light brown with black streaks - that got people's attention. She was billed as a true artist. Many adult performers don't write their own material, so a 17-year-old doing so made Lavigne seem even more authentic.
On
her biggest hits, she was paired with the then-unknown production trio known
as The Matrix, who were also listed as co-writers. But after The Matrix
started becoming ubiquitous as pop writers and producers - working with
everyone from Liz Phair to even Britney Spears and Hilary Duff - some people
started wondering how much Lavigne had actually contributed to her hits. It
didn't help that the trio, who declined to be interviewed for this article,
later seemed to be diminishing Lavigne's contributions. The issue still gets
Lavigne steamed. "I've been writing since I was a little girl. I've been
playing guitar since I was a little girl. I've been writing full-on songs
since I was 14; like, full-structured songs," she says defiantly. "I am a
writer, and I won't accept people trying to take that away from me, and
anyone who does is ignorant and doesn't know what they're talking about -
and don't you dare!" Not surprisingly, The Matrix is absent from Under My
Skin. Lavigne instead co-wrote most of the songs with fellow Canadian singer
Chantal Kreviazuk - whom she calls her new best friend. She also worked with
Ben Moody, formerly of the Grammy-winning duo Evanescence. Kreviazuk says
Lavigne was in complete control of the album and its artistic flow. "She's
just so motivated, so driven, when she sat down to write a song, she was
just a pistol," she says. "