Album Review: Avril Lavigne Love Sux

From pop punk princess to punk rock queen, Avril Lavigne has managed to change her style once again to engage her audience.

Avril Lavigne has been in the spotlight in the music industry for many years. From her top releases of Skater Boi and Complicated in 2002, to the conspiracy theory that her current career has been built by a doppelganger, there’s always something to talk about. Recently, she has paired up with other artists such as Blackbear, Machine Gun Kelly (MGK), Mark Hoppus (lead singer and bassist of Blink-182) and Travis Barker (drummer of Blink-182) to create her latest album, Love Sux. 

When Lavigne first started her career, she wrote songs that would fall under the pop-punk genre. However, as time went on, she fluctuated between grunge, pop-punk and pop-rock for 17 years. She managed to write three albums in a row that fell under the pop-rock genre, occupying eight years of her 20-year career. 

Despite her albums usually being composed of a specific genre, there are some songs that don’t fall under any genre. On her self-titled album, Avril Lavigne from 2013, she manages to combine electro pop-rock, bass-driven pop and ballads to create her album. Lavigne also believes that this album has no unifying style since the album varies between songs. 

When Lavigne first made her way back into the scene after two years of radio silence, she first featured on a song by ModSun called Flames. This song falls under the category of pop-punk and emo-pop. The lyrics of the song can lead the listener into connecting with the artists over its sense of longing. 

To kick off her new musical era, she released her new album, Love Sux, hit single, Bite Me. The song has managed to make its way to Lavigne’s top five most-streamed songs on Spotify. According to Lavigne in her interview with Kevan Kenney, she claims the song is about standing up for yourself and understanding your self-worth. 

Lavigne also wrote a pop-rock track called Bois Lie featuring Machine Gun Kelly. This song sounds like it’s from two perspectives.  One of the song’s great aspects are the lyrics, “boys lie, but girls lie too” which adds more effect to the song’s double-perspective. 

Lavigne especially branches out when she’s looking for artists to collaborate with. 

She has started working with new emo-rap artists like Blackbear on the track Love It When You Hate Me. This song is about doing something you know deep down you shouldn’t do. However, the upbeat style of this song makes doing the wrong thing sound like fun.

Along with Blackbear, Lavigne managed to get Mark Hoppus to feature on the track All I Wanted, which makes sense due to its signature Blink-182 style beat in the beginning. The chorus of the song sounds like the opening music to a new teenager coming-of-age show. Both of their voices are drastically different and have a lovely contrast to each other. 

Not only did Lavigne collaborate with Hoppus, but she also got Travis Barker to play drums on eight out of the 12 tracks for the album. This isn’t the first time that Lavigne and Barker have worked together. He also worked with her on her 2007 album The Best Damn Thing. Not only that, but Barker is also the president of her record label. 

If you’ve never listened to pop-punk before, this album isn’t a bad place to start. It’s got the guitars, the rhythm, the lyrics and it even has people experienced in the genre behind it. Lavigne began her legacy with her debut album and remains on the same path to success 20 years later.