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And both sides of Lavigne have their merits. Her half-yodel on “Love Me Insane” is a hook in itself. Whatever mode she’s in, Lavigne’s never sounded stronger or more vocally confident. “Dumb Blonde,” her kiss-off to those who are “quick to condescend/Well, you think I’m empty, I’m not,” lurches jarringly into rap-metal turf in its chorus, complete with a Nicki Minaj cameo. Aptly, the musical settings are far lighter: Suddenly, we’re in the land of carefully plucked acoustic guitars, finger-snapping pop and self-empowerment life lessons. Like a teenager after her first major date, she’s dreaming of “riding bikes at sunset by the ocean” and rhyming “pajamas” with “bananas” as he sings about her new lover finding her sexy. They’re like Blood on the Processed Tracks.Ībout halfway through, she sounds as if she popped an antidepressant on the way to the studio.
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She’s fighting “the calm before the storm,” is “locked up in a cage called love” and “fell in love with the devil.” These songs are largely steeped in the sort of rain-lashed sludge rock heard on (surprise!) Nickelback records. The Lavigne heard at the beginning of the record is almost an entirely different person by the end the hard part is figuring out which part you like more.įor roughly the first third of the album, the heartbroken Lavigne is in sight. But rarely has anyone sounded both as wrecked and rejuvenated over the course of the same record as on Head Above Water, which is an ongoing mood swing set to music. Along with sophomore slumps, breakup albums remain one of pop’s most enduring traditions. The record nonetheless comes with its own twist. Alas, Head Above Water is neither a concept album about the life of a liquid-terrified tick nor one about Kroeger Lavigne insists their breakup was amicable, and her ex is thanked in the credits for “beginning this album with me and seeing it through to the end.” She divorced husband number two, Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, and was diagnosed with Lyme disease so severe that she was bed-ridden for a period. Avril Lavigne’s first record since the beginning of Barack Obama’s second term (in other words, seemingly centuries ago) finds everyone’s favorite arrested-development case emerging from a physically and emotionally debilitating time.