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Avril Lavigne


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Here is a long article from Monday's National Post (Canadian newspaper) and she admits that she isn't punk and they mention Coldplay in the article which bugged me a lot.

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Just back off a little!

Eighteen-year-old Avril Lavigne is starting to show the strain of life as a pop star - the endless promotion, the touring, the critics. Maybe, you know, everyone could ...

 

Aaron Wherry

National Post

 

 

CREDIT: Jim Cooper, The Associated Press

 

Critics and fans alike should remember that Avril Lavigne is still just a teenager.

 

 

On the phone from Kansas City, for a moment, Avril Lavigne sounds like she's been kidnapped. "Like, today was supposed to be my day off," she whispers, conceivably so the ever-present publicist in the room won't hear her uttering such subversive sentiments. "I was told I had a day off and then I found out I had a whole lot of phoners to do."

 

Maybe she just wishes she'd been kidnapped. Snatched away from all of this and held in seclusion back in Napanee, Ont., where all the minders, media types and fans couldn't find her.

 

The crush of superstardom -- the accolades and awards -- is one thing. But with it comes both scrutiny and, inevitably, the backlash.

 

Even more so in Canada, we seem to relish eating our own, especially when they leave our tundra for warmer, more bountiful terrain. Make it big in the United States and we'll love you for the first six months, then spend the next six tearing at your smallest of wounds.

 

So while she's still answering questions about her Grammy nominations, critics old enough to be her parents are doing their very best to deconstruct our latest diva. They're interviewing other teens to investigate the anti-Avril backlash among young girls. One Ottawa critic wasted a thousand words assailing Avril's education, attire, attitude, music and grasp of the English language.

 

Meanwhile, her actual parents are talking to national magazines, discussing how sensitive a child she was and how lil' Avril used to write them love notes.

 

"I don't really like that. I think that's weird when people start interviewing my family. I know how some journalists are and that they can twist your words around and make it sound like you said something you didn't and I just think you've got to be careful. And I don't want to see anything happen to them," she says. "I kind of want my family to stay out of it in a weird way."

 

She probably does bring some of this upon herself. There have been several foot-in-mouth moments, including a butchering of David Bowie's name (which was subsequently dispatched as a special item on the same wire services that normally keep us updated about the latest weapons inspection news from Iraq).

 

And her attitude, at times, does stink. When she first spoke to the National Post last June, she was dropping F-bombs with Noel Gallagher-like proficiency. And she certainly isn't shy about expressing her displeasure with the media and the labels bestowed upon her.

 

"I'm the type of person who just likes to speak my mind and doesn't take crap from people. Ever since the beginning they saw that and saw how I was different from all the cute little girls so they just went ahead and called me punk, which was the wrong word to describe it," she says. "Which messed a lot of things up and got all the real punks out there to hate me. I've never called myself punk. I don't sit there and call myself punk because I'm not."

 

This is not a call for sympathy or a woe-is-Avril diatribe. Let us remember that we are speaking of a girl who is living out her dreams of rock stardom -- and what lucrative dreams they are, her worth already measured in the multi-millions.

 

"She'll be hanging out with realtors. Hopefully she'll be spending a lot of time with investment people who can guide her properly," says Denise Donlon, who as president of Sony Music Canada and former head honcho at MuchMusic has seen her fair share of young starlets. "She's got a great management team around her. She's got a great label around her. I think she needs to ensure that she is properly guided financially, so that her next decisions can be purely musical decisions and not necessarily monetary decisions."

 

For her part, Avril is none too fond of the monetary stuff, expressing a certain lack of fondness for those in the music business who deal with such matters.

 

"I think a large percentage of them are slimey. I mean, there's this business side, and I hate the business side," she says.

 

She could also do without the hectic schedule of a superstar.

 

"Well, I'm pretty much in it 24/7. The only time I'm not is when I can put my head down on my pillow and go to sleep. Pretty much that's all I do is this, it's my job," she laments. "I never have time off. But that's to be expected with everything that's going on, I guess."

 

And she doesn't even want to think about a second album -- and the monstrous expectations that will surround her sophomore effort.

 

"I'll focus on that when the time comes -- I'll just go do my thing, whatever I feel will just come out. I don't want to think about it. Lately, everyone keeps asking me about it, and I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it right now," she says.

 

Several months ago, Britain's latest band of the moment, Coldplay, swept through Toronto. By the end of their trip they looked and sounded much like Avril does now: exhausted, overwhelmed and lacking the time and distance to make sense of it all. But the boys in Coldplay are all in their early twenties and, with four of them, there is a built-in support system.

 

Avril is both younger and basically alone on this journey -- surrounded by assistants and advisors but, at the end of the day, with only her name on the marquee and only her to blame if it all unravels.

 

And where that Ottawa critic saw an ignorant, clueless poseur doing her best to act like a brat, maybe we should see Avril Lavigne for what she really is: a teenager.

 

All the moodiness and crankiness and complaints. All the one-word answers that make you feel like a dad asking your daughter how her day at school went. It doesn't take a doctor to diagnose this girl as a typical teenager. Except that this teenager lives her every growing pain in the public eye, her every clumsy misstep broadcast to millions.

 

"We spend so much time working on the creative level and then marketing and imaging that we don't necessarily spend a lot of time on grounding and the type of things that make us all well-rounded as human beings," Donlon says.

 

Few of us look back on our teenage years proudly. Fewer still would have wanted those formative years placed under such scrutiny.

 

While her status now makes her fair game for some amount of criticism, and investigation, let's not forget that the target is an 18-year-old girl from smalltown Ontario who probably weighs 90 pounds soaking wet with football gear on and who is going through a fair amount of emotional strife independent of periodic beatings from critics apparently in need of an easy target.

 

And she is learning her lessons and realizing her blessings. Amid all the complaints come a fair amount of giggles and at least one moment of clarity: "I never turn down anything. I try not to complain about it. And I shouldn't be complaining about it because I'm very lucky to be in the situation I'm in right now."

 

Now all she needs is a day off.

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