Avril Lavigne is getting personal on the follow-up to her 2002 multi-platinum debut, Let Go, which she’s been recording at the Malibu home of fellow Canadians Chantal Kreviazuk and Raine Maida. The as-yet-titled album is due May 25th.
“A lot of the stuff on the record is just strictly emotions that I went through,” Lavigne says, “or ways I’ve felt in the past towards relationships.”
Absent are hitmaking producers the Matrix, Let Go’s secret weapon, but Lavigne has a hot new writing and production team that includes Linkin Park and Pearl Jam producer Don Gilmore and Marvelous 3’s Butch Walker. She’s also joined by former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody on “Nobody’s Home,” which she says is about a “girl who’s lost… not me.”
Lavigne goes new metal on the dark, angsty “Take Me Away,” co-written by her guitarist Evan Taubenfeld. But the likely first single, “Don’t Tell Me,” is closer to the Avril we got to know and love with “Complicated.” Lavigne plays the self-assured girl who rejects an overeager suitor with lines such as “Did you think that I was gonna give it up to you/Did you think that that was something I was gonna do?”
“I have more creative control now,” says Lavigne. “This album is not as slick. I’m just writing the music I like. I listen to rock, and I listen to dark stuff, but I also like good pop songs. Everybody does.”