Do we like Avril Lavigne?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record and real good work, held back from higher because we found nothing on LGBTQ+ issues either way.
Avril Ramona Lavigne was born in Belleville, Ontario, in 1984 and grew up in Napanee, singing in church choirs as a kid. She taught herself guitar, wrote her own songs, and left high school to chase a deal in New York and then Los Angeles. She signed with Arista in 2000, as the pop-punk skater girl who didn't want to be bubblegum.
Her 2002 debut Let Go sold more than 15 million copies and gave us “Complicated”. Then came Under My Skin, The Best Damn Thing with its monster hit “Girlfriend”, and a run of albums that kept her touring for two decades. She's still out there on the Greatest Hits tour, which reviewers say draws a multi-generational crowd.
The scandals are small. In 2007 two songwriters sued over “Girlfriend”, alleging it borrowed from a 1979 tune. She said she had never heard the song, and her manager said a musicologist found no real similarities. It ended in a confidential settlement in early 2008, which doesn't mean she was found to have copied anything.
On the harm check, we found no harmful words or campaigns from her, and no slide into conspiracy or grievance. Her 2014 “Hello Kitty” video drew accusations of racism, which she rejected, saying she loves Japanese culture. At the 2023 Junos she swore at a topless climate protester who crashed the stage. It was rowdy, not harmful. Honest gap: we found no public statements from her on LGBTQ+ rights either way.
She's also a good sport about the internet's weirdest theory, that she died in 2003 and was replaced by a double called Melissa. On the Call Her Daddy podcast she laughed it off with “It's just funny to me”. Her most recent project is just that Mile End Kicks cover, with nothing messy attached.
So: would we support her? Yes. She's a decent, long-running pop-punk veteran with a charity record and no harmful baggage we could find. We marked her down from the top only because the record is thin on where she stands on queer and trans issues. We have no reason to doubt her, just no evidence either way.