Unless you also happen to speak Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, or Spanish. Avril’s foreign fans can now process the call-and-response chorus to her first single, “Girlfriend” — the multi-lingual versions were created to boost her ringtone sales outside the US. Plus, she nails the literary cross-promotion better than Madonna’s stuffy children’s books ever could. Avril stars in a new anime called Make 5 Wishes that’s published by Del Rey Manga, a Random House imprint. Avril served as creative consultant on the two-book series, which is drawn and written, respectively, by Camilla D’Errico and Joshua Dysart. The story features the singer as fairy-godmother type to the introverted Hana, a “rebel rocker” who’s there to help realize one girl’s dreams.
These gimmicks help, though The Best Damn Thing didn’t need any assistance to fling itself straight to #1 on the Billboard 200 chart in the first week of its release. “She’s, like, so whatever,” Avril sneers of her crush’s significant other on the addictively bouncy “Girlfriend.” Isn’t it fitting that Avril — who has never come across as very bright — would also be “so whatever” if not for the intense songwriting chemistry between her and her numerous collaborators?
On Let Go, Avril’s cohort was super songwriting team the Matrix. For the follow up Under My Skin, it was singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk and Butch Walker (formerly of Marvelous 3, now a producer/solo artist). This go-round, she elected to work alongside professional hit maker Dr. Luke, the man responsible for Kelly Clarkson’s genre-skipping “Since U Been Gone.” Walker, Rob Cavallo (Green Day, My Chemical Romance), and Serban Ghenea take additional production credits. The Best Damn Thing is Avril’s — and her management’s — attempt at crafting a happy medium out of the slickness of Let Go and the slow, bitter ballads that dominated Under My Skin. What we’re left with is pure teenage venom.
In spite of her insistence that she’s grown up since the release of Under My Skin, Avril continues to sing about the same things: character stereotypes, overblown successes, maudlin disappointments. Fans, of course, will be grateful that her marriage to Sum 41 frontman and fellow Canadian Deryck Whibley hasn’t turned her off such pummeling boy-bashing cuts as “Everything Back But You.” After all, this type of faux tough-chick songwriting is where Avril shines. The majority of her new material hasn’t changed a bit: the big, juicy hooks that pile on top of one another like clumps of glitter on glue, and the campy pop-punkiness that feels about as forced-cool as a classic episode of Saved by the Bell. Avril’s personal reinvention — a PR-spun transformation that by now has become the gold standard for coming-of-age solo artists — has more to do with admitting that what she likes best is rocking out. Being an adult has never been a prerequisite.
“Runaway,” Avril’s dumbed-down “what does it all mean” existential musing, has an ebullient chorus that rivals that of her own “Breakaway.” (She co-wrote the song and gave it to Clarkson to record.) The title track handsprings into a cheerleader chant that finds Avril boasting about being a drama queen and looking gorgeous — perhaps a result of the confidence boost that arrived with her modeling contract. And “One of Those Girls” is a breathless meditation on the lady players who chew the nice boys up and spit them out an ego-shattered mess. “I know what you’re all about,” Avril scoffs. “I really hope he figures it out.” It’s an enjoyable, irreverent romp through adolescence tempered by none of the retrospect that should come out of Avril as she enters her 20s.
