YMMV / Avril Lavigne

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Avril is a vampire. Specifically, the stranger from "I'm with You" turned her and "Under My Skin" was inspired by someone that she accidentally killed. "Here's To Never Growing Up" is her vampire anthem.
  • In "Sk8er Boi", Avril's just telling one side of the story. Her boyfriend is the one who got rejected and he may have been very bitter. Maybe the ballerina had a good reason for rejecting him.
• Angst Aversion: Under My Skin is disliked due to the amount of Breakup Songs and Darker and Edgier tone. Avril herself isn't too fond of it either, claiming that the Lighter and Softer tone of The Best Damn Thing came from her wanting to just have fun in music again.
• Awesome Ego: In "The Best Damn Thing", "I Don't Have To Try", and even "Girlfriend", she's so cute when she brags.
• Awesome Music: "Keep Holding On", "Contagious", "Fall to Pieces", madly overlooked "Everything Back But You", "When You're Gone", "Hot", "Love Sux" and "Complicated". Arguably "Alice" as well. "Rock N Roll" is also pretty epic.
• Broken Base:
  • "Girlfriend" is easily Avril's most divisive song. A lot of fans hate it compared to her previous output, especially since it marks a massive change in tone (and there are those who got sick of it being played everywhere). There are just as many who find it fun and catchy, and count it among her best songs.
  • Her makeover around the time of The Best Damn Thing - wherein she got a Girliness Upgrade, dyed her hair blonde and was far more pop than Pop Punk. Some hardcore fans accused her of "selling out" by adopting a more feminine look (although she still retained some of her original style), while others didn't mind and pointed out she was a grown woman by that point (she was 22 when "Girlfriend" first came out) and allowed to change her look if she wanted. Then of course there were the people who liked the Hotter and Sexier direction for obvious reasons.
• Contested Sequel:
  • Under My Skin for its dark tone and sad lyrics. It's seen as wangsty to many, yet as many others consider it her best album.
  • The Best Damn Thing. Fans are split on the massive change in tone.
• Crack Pairing: Anyone ever believe Avril/Winnie Cooper happening? Well, it did in her "Rock and Roll" video.
• Creator's Oddball: "Hello Kitty" from the Avril Lavigne album sounds nothing like she ever released before or since, including the subject matter, and even the colorful J-Pop-inspired videoclip looks more like something Katy Perry would have done.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Songs from her debut tend to be this, such as "Losing Grip", "Mobile", and "Anything but Ordinary".
  • From her acting career, perhaps her most well-known role was as Heather from Over the Hedge, who herself is one of the more popular characters of the film.
• First Installment Wins: Most people think she reached her peak with Let Go, all while Under My Skin was criticized for Wangst, The Best Damn Thing was when she abandoned her famous punk image for a pink-princess no nonsense attitude and even further with her later albums.
• Fridge Horror: In the "Girlfriend" music video, the nerdy girl gets hit in the head with a golf ball and falls in a decorative river. Those things are notorious for being bacteria-riddled, so one hopes she didn't get any in her mouth. And, later, she's still stumbling around, which means she probably has a concussion.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: She has a massive fandom in Japan and is still popular there even though Americans largely see her as a fad long passed by. This was reportedly her motive for making "Hello Kitty".
• Hollywood Homely: Look at the nerdy girl in the "Girlfriend" video. Word of God says it's satirical with Misaimed Fandom. Reinforcing the satirical interpretation is the fact that the nerdy girl and the bitchy girl are both played by Avril.
• Iron Woobie: "Get Over It".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your girlfriend."
  • The "Avril is dead' theory, where a Twitter user discussed an old blog that states that Avril died in 2002/2003 and was replaced with a lookalike she became friends with. Fans poke fun at this with people usually complaining about missing the "old Avril" and calling Avril "Melissa" (the name of the 'lookalike').
  • "He was a skater boy, she said see you later boy"
    • "He was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious?"
    • "He was a punk. She did ballet."
• Memetic Outfit: Tank top, necktie, and cargo pants.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Despite some accusations of racism and stereotyping from westerners (even though the tropes in that music video are quite common in Japan), Lavigne's song "Hello Kitty" is very popular among Japanese fans (though the song didn't chart too well in Japan itself). Reportedly, Lavigne's general popularity among the Japanese is why she made the song at all.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Word of God says "Girlfriend" was supposed to be satirical. However, people took it at face value. Considering the song is about an Alpha Bitch trying to steal another girl's man, acting haughty, and mocking the girlfriend, it received a considerable amount of backlash. On the opposite side, Fan Vid makers in particular love it for Die for Our Ship videos.
  • "Hello Kitty" has nothing to do with actual cats or Hello Kitty but a lot of the hate comes from it being perceived as a random song about cute cats.
• Recurring Fanon Character: She has one in Melissa Vandella. According to a popular conspiracy theory, Avril died in 2003 and was replaced by a Melissa, a body double.
• She Really Can Act: She's a good singer in general, but while mostly known for her pop-punk songs, one can argue that Avril did really well with some of her more dramatic songs, "When You're Gone", "Slipped Away" and her 2018 comeback single "Head Above Water" being good examples.
• Signature Song: It's either "Complicated" or "Sk8er Boi" from the Let Go era, or "Girlfriend" from The Best Damn Thing era.
• So Bad, It's Good: "Girlfriend" is now this as of the late 2010s; just read some of the critic reviews for Burnout Paradise Remastered and you'll see why.
• Song Association: "Girlfriend" with Burnout, especially Burnout Paradise. When Burnout Paradise Remastered was released in 2018, ten years after the original's release, a good number of video game critics explicitly pointed out "Girlfriend" being part of the game's now incredibly dated soundtrack.
• Spiritual Successor: To Alanis Morissette as both are Canadian singer-songwriters who play rock music but market themselves more to pop audiences.
• Strangled by the Red String: "Sk8er Boi." The song opens with the lines, "He was a boy. She was a girl. Can I make it any more obvious?" However, the girl actually rejected the boy because they had nothing in common; still, for not seeing the "obvious," she is treated like an idiot by the narrator.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "When You're Gone", "Slipped Away".
  • "Nobody's Home" as well.
  • Her live performance of her song "Tomorrow". The fact that she sang it in dedication to her grandfather who had passed away that same night really sets the bar.
  • "My Happy Ending" also is this.
  • From her self-titled album: "Hello Heartache" into "Falling Fast" into "Hush Hush". Even the "falling into love again" song "Falling Fast" has a bittersweet tone, and sounds even more heartbreaking in-between the two breakup ballads, which have more nuance then most breakup-themed songs.
  • Her 2018 comeback single "Head Above Water" — which Avril started writing while bedridden with Lyme Disease and thought she was going to die. The lyric "I'm too young to fall asleep" hits especially hard.
  • Being the song is about loneliness and alludes to depression, "I'm with You" certainly counts.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Her old goth/punk fanbase left by the boatloads the moment "Girlfriend" came out. The backlash came from the fact that her fans considered her to be One of Us, a singer who "got" them and their lives and experiences and felt she spoke both to them and for them. The apparent message of "Girlfriend" (that it was okay for a popular preppy girl to bully, harass and steal the boyfriend of a less popular and attractive girl) pushed the Berserk Button for many of these fans who'd been all too often on the receiving end of this kind of behavior and having their idol seemingly trivialize and endorse it did not go down well. Word of God is that the song was supposed to be satirical, but many fans felt that this failed to come across in the song and video at all. Some fans didn't even realise Avril played both girls in the video.
• Wangst: Under My Skin could be accused of this at times with the Lyrical Dissonance and the many Breakup Songs it contains.

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