Avril Lavigne says she just wanted to have fun on her third album, The Best Damn Thing, which hit stores this week.
The Napanee, Ont., native, was explaining the in-your-face, aggressive pop sound on the disc -- best exemplified by the sing-along first single, Girlfriend -- which seems contrary to her happy personal life.
To explain further, Lavigne married fellow Canuck pop-punk rocker Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 last July and the two recently purchased a multi-million-dollar home in Beverly Hills, not Bel-Air as earlier reported.
"My last record (2004's Under My Skin), I was 19 and I was kind of in a darker place in my life. And that's kind of the music I liked. I liked the darker piano parts and the verses and then the heavy guitars," said Lavigne, 22, on the phone from New York yesterday.
"And this record, I was just all about bopping around and having fun. And when I'm on stage, no matter what kind of mood I'm in, this stuff's fun. When you hear it, you can just jump around, the audience freaks out. I realized this is the kind of record I need to make, 'cause these are the songs that I like. I definitely wanted this album to be pop and catchy, and to rock so I feel like I totally nailed my vision."
Lavigne also relished her independence in the studio without label interference and partying it up -- "I mean a couple of the songs I was definitely wasted," she admits -- with a number of producers, including Whibley.
"I thought they would kind of suit his kind of style, like the younger energy," said Lavigne. "And so I gave him Contagious and One Of Those Girls to do and (Sum 41's) Steve-O played drums. We were both in the same studio too, which was kind of cool, for like a month or a couple of weeks, so we just did it then."
In the time between Under My Skin and The Best Damn Thing, Lavigne also began acting, with small roles in the animated feature Over The Hedge, Fast Food Nation and the upcoming The Flock opposite Richard Gere.
"When I was younger I was in theatre, outside of school, and I was in some of the school plays, and enjoyed it, singing and acting, and now I'm kind of at the point where I'd like to do a really great movie."
To that end, Lavigne said she will star in a film later this year but couldn't give the title or director just yet.
"It's kind of a darker film, a bit of a drama, it's sort of indie," said Lavigne.
Lavigne, who won't tour until 2008, was headed to L.A. last night and will tape Ellen today after a string of high profile appearances in the Big Apple this past week.
Next up is a promo visit to Asia and Australia -- although she's pencilled in to appear at the MuchMusic Video Awards on June 17 -- and then she'll do some summer festival dates in Europe, on which Sum 41 are also playing. Whibley's group also has a new album, Underclass Hero, due July 24.
Lavigne said managing a double rock star marriage isn't as difficult as it sounds.
"We respect each other and he respects what I do and I respect what he does. We have the same manager, Terry McBride, so it just works out. It's like we take our time off together and sometimes we get to do the same festivals and stuff, whatever, it works out fine."
Lavigne, like, really moved by, like, U.S. school shootings
Avril Lavigne is in promotional mode for her new album, The Best Damn Thing, but she's also been paying attention to the media coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings.
Particularly when some of the coverage has used music from her new album -- specifically Keep Holding On, which originally was written for the movie Eragon -- as a backdrop to the sad images.
"Today on Regis And Kelly (on which she appeared yesterday), the show that's on before it, played Keep Holding On with images from the shooting that just happened," Lavigne told Sun Media. "So my hair guy was like, 'Do you see that? That's so crazy. It's like you were meant to write that song.'
"I hear stories where, like, my music really touches people and helps them. That's what music does. I definitely have songs that I'll hear on the radio if I'm in a certain mood, and you can totally relate or it's empowering and that's what was kind of cool (yesterday) when Keep Holding On came on the television. I was like, 'Woah!' "
And given many of those killed would have been around the same age as Lavigne, it definitely has affected her.
"I think it's really sad," she said. "And the thing that I'm actually pissed of about is, I was reading in the papers that an English teacher reported (the shooter) to, like, the counsel, to, like, four different people, like, 'This guy seems disturbed.' And people in the school knew he was kind of f---ed up and, like, no one did anything about it. That's the kind of thing, if you see, like, warning signs and red flags, people need to do things about it."
