- Singer songwriter born in 1984 in Belleville Ontario Canada.
- As a child, she showed a knack for singing – when she was 2 years old, she would sing on the way home from church, and she would sing herself to sleep at night. Her parents bought her a microphone, keyboard, drum kit and guitars and set up a studio for her in their basement. At 14, she was performing karaoke, and at 15 she won a radio contest to perform with Shania Twain at a concert in front of 20,000 people. They sang Twain’s song What Made You Say That. During a performance at a local theater, she was noticed by Stephen Medd, a local folk singer, and Lavigne was asked to sing on 2 of his albums in 1999 and 2000.
- By late 1999, Lavigne was discovered by her first manager singing country songs at a bookstore. Tapes of her karaoke performances were sent to music industry executives and management firms. In the summer of 2000, she was in New York working with a producer, and she wrote the song Why. That November, a record executive heard her sing in the producer’s studio, and 15 minutes later, he offered her a contract worth $1.25 million for 2 albums, plus a publishing advance of $900,000. Her management found musicians to back her that fit her personality, and they targeted a punk pop style.
- During 2001, she worked with different producers to develop her sound and style. By early January 2002, recording of her debut album was complete, and Let Go was released in June that year. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and at #1 in the U.K. – at 17 years old, she was the youngest female solo artist ever to have a #1 album in the U.K. The album is certified 6x platinum, and global sales are over 16 million copies. Her debut single, Complicated, peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 chart, and the album’s next 2 singles, Sk8er Boi and I’m With You both cracked the top 10.
- Her follow-up album, Under My Skin, was released in 2004. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard album chart, and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Its highest charting single was My Happy Ending, peaking at #9. Her third album, 2007’s The Best Damn Thing, included her first song to land at #1 in the U.S. – Girlfriend. It was hugely popular, one of the top songs of 2007, and the music video was the first ever to reach 100 million views on YouTube.
- Lavigne started recording songs for her fourth album in 2008, but Goodbye Lullaby was not released until 2011. While it did not sell as well as her previous albums, the single What The Hell peaked at #11 on the Billboard Hot 200. The album showed a shift away from punk-pop – it was more introspective and stripped down compared to her earlier work. Three months after its release, she announced that she was already working on her next record. In November 2013, the self titled Avril Lavigne, was released. One single, Here’s To Never Growing Up, made it to #20 on the chart. She also released albums in 2019 and 2022.
- Staring in the early 00s, Lavigne became active as an actress and a fashion designer. Her first TV appearance was in 2002, performing Sk8er Boi with her band on Sabrina The Teenage Witch. She has performed twice on Saturday Night Live, and her most recent work was as the voice of Snow White in the 2018 animated film Charming. In 2008, she launched the Abbey Dawn fashion line, sold exclusively at Kohl’s. She also has 3 fragrances endorsed by her.
- Avril Lavigne is the most successful female pop-punk artist of this millennium. She has paved the way for many other artists. She is the third best selling female Canadian artist of all time, trailing only Celine Dion and Shania Twain (Alanis Morissette has sold more albums, but Lavigne has sold many more singles). Here is her biggest hit – Complicated.