Ontario, but spent the majority of her youth in the small town of Napanee. By the age of 15, she had appeared on stage with Shania Twain; by 16, she had
signed a two-album recording contract with Arista (now RCA Records) worth more than $2 million. In 2002, when she was 17 years old, Lavigne broke onto
the music scene with her debut album Let Go.
Let Go made Lavigne the youngest female soloist to reach No. 1 in the UK, and the album was certified four-times platinum by the Recording Industry
Association of America. By 2009, over 16 million copies had been sold worldwide. Her breakthrough single, "Complicated", peaked at No. 1 in many
countries around the world, as did the album Let Go. Her second album, Under My Skin, was released in 2004 and was her first album to peak at No. 1
on the U.S. Billboard 200, eventually selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. The Best Damn Thing, Lavigne’s third album, was released in 2007,
becoming her third No. 1 album in the UK Albums Chart and featuring her first U.S. Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single, "Girlfriend". Lavigne has scored a total
of five No. 1 singles worldwide, including "Complicated", "Sk8er Boi", "I'm with You", "My Happy Ending" and "Girlfriend". With more than 30 million
copies of her albums sold worldwide, Lavigne is currently one of the top-selling artists releasing albums in the U.S., with over 10.25 million copies certified
by the RIAA. Her fourth studio album, Goodbye Lullaby, was released in March 2011. Goodbye Lullaby gave Lavigne her fourth top 10 album on the U.S.
Billboard 200 and the UK Albums Chart and her third No. 1 album in both Japan and Australia. Three months after the release of Goodbye Lullaby, Lavigne
began work on her fifth album.
Lavigne branched out from recording music, pursuing careers in feature film acting and designing clothes and perfumes. She voiced a character in the
animated film, Over the Hedge, in 2006. That same year, she made her on-screen feature film debut in Fast Food Nation. In 2008, Lavigne introduced her
clothing line, Abbey Dawn, and in 2009, she released her first perfume, Black Star, which was followed by her second perfume, Forbidden Rose, in 2010.
In July 2006, Lavigne married her boyfriend of two years, Deryck Whibley, lead singer and guitarist for Sum 41. The marriage lasted a little over three years,
and in October 2009, Lavigne filed for divorce. Whibley and Lavigne continued to work together, with Whibley producing her fourth album, as well as
Lavigne's single, "Alice", written for Tim Burton's film Alice in Wonderland.
Contents
Early life
Avril Ramona Lavigne was born in Belleville, Ontario. Her father, Jean-Claude Lavigne, named her "Avril" after the French word for the month of April. At
the age of two, she began singing church songs along with her mother, Judith-Rosanne "Judy" (née Loshaw). Judy recognized her two year old
daughter's talents after hearing her sing "Jesus Loves Me" in church. Lavigne has an older brother, Matthew, and a younger sister, Michelle, both of
whom teased her when she sang. "My brother used to knock on the wall because I used to sing myself to sleep and he thought it was really annoying."
When Lavigne was five years old, the family moved to Napanee, Ontario, a town with an approximate population of 5,000.Although she struggled
with paying attention in school, sometimes getting kicked out of class for misbehaving, her parents were supportive of her singing. Her father bought her a
microphone, a drum kit, a keyboard, several guitars, and converted their basement into a studio. When Lavigne was 14, her parents would take her to
karaoke sessions.Lavigne also performed at country fairs, singing songs by Garth Brooks, The Dixie Chicks, and Shania Twain. She also began writing
her own songs. Her first song was called "Can't Stop Thinking About You", about a teenage crush, which she described as "cheesy cute".
“ I’ve known all my life that this is what I was supposed to do.... Visualizing like what it would be like to be famous with my music. And always just
dreaming, always daydreaming. ”
—Avril Lavigne, NBC News
In 1999,[9] Lavigne won a radio contest to perform with fellow Canadian singer Shania Twain at the Corel Centre (now Scotiabank Place) in Ottawa, before
an audience of 20,000 people. Twain and Lavigne sang "What Made You Say That", and Lavigne told Twain she was going to be "a famous singer".
[4] During a performance with the Lennox Community Theatre, Lavigne was spotted by local folk singer Stephen Medd. He invited her to contribute vocals
on his song, "Touch the Sky", for his 1999 album, Quinte Spirit. She later sang on "Temple of Life" and "Two Rivers" for his follow-up album, My Window to
You, in 2000. In December 1999, Lavigne was discovered by her first professional manager, Cliff Fabri, while singing country covers at a Chapters bookstore
in Kingston, Ontario. Fabri sent out VHS tapes of Lavigne's home performances to several industry prospects, and Lavigne was visited by several
executives.Mark Jowett, co-founder of the Canadian management firm Nettwerk, received a copy of Lavigne's karaoke performances recorded in her
parents' basement, and arranged for Lavigne to work with Peter Zizzo in New York during the summer of 2000, where she wrote the song "Why?". It was
on a subsequent trip to New York that Lavigne was noticed by Arista Records.
Lavigne would go on to sell more than 30 million copies of her albums worldwide, becoming one of the top-selling artists releasing albums in the U.S.,
with over 10.25 million copies certified by the RIAA.[13] In 2009, Billboard named Lavigne the No. 10 pop artist in the "Best of the 2000s" chart, and she was
listed as the 28th overall best act of the decade based on album sales, chart success, and cultural relativity in the U.S.
Main article: Let Go (Avril Lavigne album)
In November 2000, Ken Krongard, an A&R representative, invited Antonio "L.A." Reid, then-head of Arista Records, to producer Peter Zizzo's Manhattan
studio to hear Lavigne sing. Her 15-minute audition "so impressed" Reid, he immediately signed her to Arista with a deal worth $1.25 million for two
albums and an extra $900,000 for a publishing advance. By this time, Lavigne had found that she fit in naturally with her hometown high school's
skater clique, an image that carried through to her first album, but although she enjoyed skateboarding, school left her feeling insecure. Armed with a
record deal, she dropped out to focus on her music career, but she still had to inform her parents of her decision. "I wasn't going to turn [the record deal]
down. It's been my dream all my life. They knew how much I wanted this and how much I've put into it."
Lavigne released her debut album, Let Go, on 4 June 2002 in the U.S., where it reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200. It peaked at No. 1 on the Australian,
Canadian and United Kingdom charts. This made Lavigne, at 17 years old, the youngest female soloist to have a No. 1 album in the UK until that time.
By the end of 2002, the album was certified four-times platinum by the RIAA, making her the bestselling female artist of 2002 and Let Go the top-selling
debut of the year. By May 2003, Let Go had accumulated over 1,000,000 sales in Canada, receiving a diamond certification from the Canadian Recording
Industry Association. As of 2009, the album has sold over 16 million units worldwide, and the RIAA has certified the album six-times platinum,
denoting shipments of over six million units in the U.S.
“ I don't get overwhelmed, just because I feel like I've kind of prepared myself for it. All my life this is what I've wanted, what I've dreamed about,
and I knew this would happen. I've been singing ever since I was really young and I've wanted this so bad, and I told myself I would do it. ”
—Avril Lavigne on her success, MTV
Lavigne's debut single and the album's lead single, "Complicated", peaked at No. 1 in Australia and No. 2 in the U.S. "Complicated" was one of the
bestselling Canadian singles of 2002, and it was also featured on the teen television show, Dawson's Creek. "Complicated" later ranked on the Hot 100
Singles of the Decade list at No. 83.
Subsequent singles, "Sk8er Boi" and "I'm With You" reached the top ten in the U.S. Thanks to the success of her first three singles, Lavigne was the second
artist in history to have three No. 1 songs from a debut album on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40. For the music video to "Complicated", Lavigne was
named Best New Artist at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. She won four Juno Awards in 2003 out of six nominations,received a World Music
Award for "World's Bestselling Canadian Singer", and was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for
"Complicated" (2003).
In 2002, Lavigne made a cameo appearance in the music video to "Hundred Million" by the pop punk band Treble Charger. In March 2003, Lavigne posed
for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and, later in May, performed "Fuel" during MTV's Icon tribute to Metallica. During her first headlining
tour, the Try To Shut Me Up Tour, Lavigne covered Green Day's "Basket Case".
Lavigne was featured in the 2003 game, The Sims: Superstar, as a non-playable celebrity.
2004–05: Under My Skin
Main article: Under My Skin (Avril Lavigne album)
Lavigne in Vancouver, Canada during the Live and By Surprise mall tour
Lavigne co-wrote "Breakaway" with Matthew Gerard, which was recorded by Kelly Clarkson for the soundtrack to the 2004 film The Princess Diaries 2:
Royal Engagement."Breakaway" would later be included on Clarkson's second album and released as the album's lead single. Lavigne covered the
Goo Goo Dolls song "Iris", performed with the band's lead singer John Rzeznik at Fashion Rocks, and she posed for the cover of Maxim in October 2004
She also recorded the theme song for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. "I made the song a little more edgy," Lavigne said. "There are a lot of loud
guitars, and we picked the tempo up a little and sang it with a little more attitude." Lavigne rearranged the song with the help of producer Butch Walker.
Lavigne's second studio album, Under My Skin, was released on 25 May 2004, debuting at No. 1 in several countries, including Australia, Mexico, Canada,
Japan, the UK, and the U.S.
The album has sold more than 10 million copies. Lavigne wrote most of the album's tracks with Canadian singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk. Kreviazuk's
husband, Our Lady Peace front man Raine Maida, co-produced the album, along with Butch Walker and Don Gilmore. Lavigne went on the Live and By
Surprise twenty-one city mall tour in the U.S. and Canada to promote the album, accompanied by her guitarist, Evan Taubenfeld. Each performance
consisted of a short live acoustic set of songs from the new album. At the end of 2004, Lavigne embarked on her first world tour, the Bonez Tour, with
stopovers in almost every continent and which lasted for the entire 2005 year.
“ This record definitely proves that I'm a writer and people can't knock that, because each song comes from a personal experience of mine, and
there are so much emotions in those songs. ”
—Avril Lavigne, The Ledger
"Don't Tell Me", the first single off the album, went to No. 1 in Argentina and Mexico and reached the top five in the UK and Canada and the top ten in
Australia and Brazil. "My Happy Ending", the album's lead single, went to No. 1 in Mexico and the top five in the UK and Australia. In the U.S., it reached
the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 and went to No. 1 in the Mainstream Top 40, making it her fourth-biggest hit there. The third single, "Nobody's Home",
did not make the top 40 in the U.S., reaching No. 1 only in Mexico and Argentina. The fourth single from the album, "He Wasn't", reached top 40 positions
in the UK and Australia and was not released in the U.S.
Lavigne won two World Music Awards in 2004 for "World's Best Pop/Rock Artist" and "World's Bestselling Canadian Artist". She received five Juno Award
nominations in 2005, and picked up three, including "Artist of the Year". She won the award for "Favorite Female Singer" at the eighteenth annual
Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards and was nominated in every MTV Award show shown around the world.
2006–08: The Best Damn Thing
Current members
Al Berry – bass guitar, backing vocals (2007–present)
Rodney Howard – drums, percussion, backing vocals (2007–present)
Steve Ferlazzo – electronic keyboard, backing vocals (2007–present)
Jim McGorman – rhythm guitar, backing vocals (2007–present)
Steve Fekete – lead guitar, backing vocals (2008–present)
No comments:
Post a Comment