At the age of seventeen, Canadian Avril Lavigne scored a huge international hit with Complicated, after which the album Let Go (2002) sold no fewer than fourteen million times. An entire generation of teenage girls was drawn to this skate girl's solid songs and carefully styled punky image. The skepticism that such a major breakthrough usually evokes is not justified in Lavigne's case. Unlike many
… other singers from the hit factories, she writes her songs herself and knows how to convince live. On her second album Under My Skin, little has changed musically. Lavigne is still good for a radio-friendly variant of punk pop, with nice sing-along choruses and lyrics about the insecurities of adolescent girls. One song (Nobody ' s Home) she wrote with her boyfriend Ben Moody, the ex-guitarist of Evanescence. That Lavigne does not shy away from personal themes is evident from the sensitive closing track Slipped Away, a song about her deceased grandfather. (MS)more
