Avril Lavigne Is Still the ‘Motherfreaking Princess’ of Pop

“I’m still the motherfreaking princess!”
In the bratty voice that, for much of a decade, made her the defiant figurehead of an army of teens who preferred the pop that soundtracked their growing pains be tinged with a little punk-rock danger, Avril Lavigne declares that she still wears the crown. The lyric comes on “Rock N Roll,” the first track on her new album Avril Lavigne. It’s the Canadian songstress’s aggressively weird, epically catchy fifth album. It also might be her best yet.
Much has changed since 2002. Back then, the 17-year-old paired a necktie with a white tank top and sold nearly 17 million copies of her debut album, Let Go, on the backs of edgy pop singles “Complicated,” “Sk8er Boi,” and “I’m With You.” Today she’s on her second marriage, this time to Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger. Albums three and four were commercial disappointments. Katy Perry’s zeroed in on the market for screw-the-haters hooks, while the baton’s been passed to Miley Cyrus to lead the movement of petulant provocation. Oh yeah, and the singing teenage rebel herself? She’s closing in on 30 years old.
“I’m wearing a dress!” Lavigne boasts, lounging on a plush couch in a Manhattan hotel. “I wouldn’t have done this ten years ago.”
It’s fitting that Avril Lavigne is the singer’s first self-titled album—rare when an artist is already five records in—as it so glaringly scores the tension that comes when a person reaches this age. Surely there has to be something deeper to the self-titling than the reason Lavigne offers up: “I couldn’t really figure out a name.”
The opening half of the album is shamelessly nostalgic. The raucous and addicting “Rock N Roll” channels teenage Avril, serving up the challenge: “What if you and I put a middle finger to the sky and let them feel like we are rock and roll?” After dabbling with moody doom and gloom on so much of her last disc, Goodbye Lullaby, the radio-ready “Here’s to Never Growing Up” has her comfortably back as troubadour of teenage rabble-rousing. “We’ll be running down the street yelling, ‘Kiss my ass!’/ I’m like yeah, whatever, we’re living like that,” she sings, sounding like Taylor Swift, had the country starlet ever dared sneak whiskey from her parents’ liquor cabinet.