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статья из журнала "Jane"
| Цитата: | This pop star doesn't care if you laugh at her or love her.
Esther Hayes avoids the spit spray.
Avril Lavigne is dancing around in front of me. "In a second you'll be wrapped around my fing-er," she whisper-sings slowly as she points her finger in front of her and works through a carefully choreographed routine. "'Cause I can, 'cause I can do it bet-ter."
The 22-year-old singer is spontaneously showing me moves from the video for her single "Girlfriend" from her new album, The Best Damn Thing. Avril un-self-consciously countinues the dance routine, singing, "She's so stupid, what the hell were you think-ing?" She's wearing pink Uggs, pink pants and a black hoodie with skulls on it. Despite that, this whole thing is really cute.
Not that she especially wants to be cute. These days the Canadian pop singer is battling critics everywhere she turns. "She's a poser!" people say, pointing to her recent storybook wedding. "She's disgusting!" others say, referring to a paparazzi-spitting incident a few monthes ago. Avril has been criticized for dressing grungy black, then glamourous white; she's been mocked for skateboarding through the streets, then for catching a ride in a Rolls Royce. It's like she can't win. But at the same time, she continues to have ferociously loyal fans.
Avril sits down and says, "I have a strong personality, you either like it or you don't. I'm a certain ... style. And that's okay with me." Basically, Avril truly doesn't seem to give a shit about what people think of her. And that drives people nuts.
Born in Napanee,Ontario, Avril spent her childhood wowing the locals with inspirational songs she sang at her church and small-town fairs. She didn't have many role models, because very few big stars passed through Napanee. "My mom made me go to aBritney Spears concert when I was young," Avril says. "And I was like 'No, I don't want to!" She was like, 'You're going to be a performer, youneed to see other people!'"
Apparently, she learned pretty damn quickly how to perform. When Avril was 14, her father heard about a contest on the radio. "They were like, 'Submit a tape of you singing a Shania Twain song.' " she says. "I won and later sang onstage with her. It was at the Corel Center in Ottawa. It's, like, this massive venue, an arena, and then-" suddenly Avril gets really loud, like she's ultrapsyched "- LIKE, THREE YEARS LATER I GET A RECORD DEAL AND I'M SINGING THERE, SOLD OUT!"
Avril seems genuinley stunned. She continues, "It was crazy, because I remember walking onstage and being like, 'Holy fuck, I want this so bad.' Just seeing all those people. And now every time I do my tour there, I'm so grateful."
Of course, after that first day onstage, she went on to teen stardom, with hits like "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi." She started flipping off photographers, wearing skull jewelry and drinking beer. She was subversive enought that people started to say things like, "What does she think she is - punk? She's not punk!"
Producer/singer Butch Walker cowrote the 2004 single "My Happy Ending" with her. "Avril has never claimed to be punk. I think she doesn't even know any punk music," he says. "The only thing she knows from that genre is probably Green Day, and most punk hardcores consider Green Day a sellout from Dookie on. So I don't really look at it that way so much as that she's just a star. She set out to be big, and she is. When somebody get popular, people want to say others can't do it because they can't do it. They want to bring other people down."
Avril married her own nep-punk guy last July: Deryck Whibley, a fellow Canadian and the lead singer for Sum 41. But instead of rocker her typical Hot Topic style, she wore a Vera Wang dress and walked down a Montecite, Calif., aisle just like countless Hollywood rich kids. The tabloids had a heyday, saying she wasn't being true to herself.
"I wanted to be like, 'Oh, let's totally have a rock 'n' roll, goth wedding.' But at the same time I was like, 'I've been dreaming about my wedding since I was a little girl. I have to wear the white dress.' I wanted to be a princess, okay?" Avril says, laughing. "People thought I would have done, like, some black wedding dress, and yeah, I would have. But at the same time I was thinking about our pictures, and I wanted - like, that's why I have this ring - I wanted to be in style." She holds up the hugest Barbie-dream-bauble diamond ring ever. "It's a classic. I didn't want to be, like, 20 years later, 'Oh, why did I wear my hair like that? It's not cool now.' "
I ask Avril about an old Playboy interview in which Deryck said, "When I'm coming down from coke, I can't be alone for some reason."
"He doesn't do drugs," Avril jumps in. "Clearly, he used to, because he talked about it, but I wouldn't be with someone who did, and I made that very clear to him when we first started dating. I've never done coke in my life, and I'm proud of that. Oh my god! I could never. I am 100 precent against drugs."
"Do you ever get paranoid that groupies are throwing themselves at Deryck when he's on tour?" I ask.
"No, we have a really good, strong relationship. There's a lot of trust. I know how much I mean to him, and ..." Avril pauses, then smiles and says, "I'm the best thing that's ever happened to him."
Avril is no afraid to kick a little ass now and then. And I don't mean "get onstage and sing your heart out" kick ass, although she does that,too. I mean kick ass kick ass. "Well, I don't fight people anymore," she says. Avril gives a lot of disclaimers during this part of the interview. "I'm more mature now, and I just don't think fighting is good. But I remember being in Toronto and walking into a CD store, and some guy with spiky hair was all, 'Hey, Avril!' and then started lippin' at me. I was like, 'Okay, this is embarrassing, I'm just goint to leave.'"
She laughs. "So I'm walking down the street amd the guy comes out of the store, still yelling.
I turn around, fuckin' grab him an go 'What?' And I fuckin' knee him in the balls, throw him down, and his fuckin' punk girlfriend comes over and goes, 'What the fuck are you doing?' And I go [she changes her voice to sound like a complete badass], 'What the fuck are you doin'?' And it was like they totally didn't expect me to do anything, because I'm just this girl on TV or whatever." she says. "I'm not proud of that. I think it's funny, but I wouldn't do it now. I'd just be like, 'Okay, you're a loser.' Then I would leave.
Spitting, on the other hand, is a whole different story. "I don't know what the big deal was, because I've been spitting at the paparazzi the past two years I've lived in L.A.," she says about a video that appeared on gossip sites last fall showing her launching a gob of spit at photographers. "Then they made it into a story; they said I said 'fuck you" to my fans, which, like, uh, I would never do. When you're outside of Hyde, or like any club, there are paparazzi guys holding glossies, they have nice little blue Sharpies, and they want you to sign them so they can sell them on eBay. They're called 'professionals', they follow you everywhere. So I was like [she mimics signing an autograph], 'Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you!'" She laughs.
"Oh, it was directed toward them?" I ask.
"Yeah! Of course it was!" she says. "Oh, and everyone was laughing - the photographers wanted me to spit on them. I was like 'Ja-ha-ha-ha [she pretends like she's hawking a loogie], ha-ha-ha!' It was funny. But I thikn if Britney had no underwear on that week, my spitting thing wouldn't have been talked about."
"Do you ever go out in dresses with no underwear?" I ask.
"Absolutley not!" she says. We crack up.
The thing is, despite all her (humorous) antics, Avril is far from and out-of-control brat. This chick can actually write her own sonfs. Besides her own hits, she cowrote the Kelly Clarkson ballad "Breakaway" - which despite its slight cheesiness, won over lots of cool people and sold almost a million downloads. She's also beem nominated for an impressive eight Grammies, and she's won four Juno's and an MTV Video Award.
"I wrote 'Breakaway' when I was 15 or 16, and I didn't like it," Avril says. "It kinda of reminded ,e of a church song. But afte rmy first record, someone said, 'Kelly Clarkson wants to sing that song.' I was like, 'Okay.' She has a beautiful voice and she's a nice girl. She did a really good job with it."
"Breakaway" doesn't seem at all like an Avril Lavigne song. "Would you ever sing it yourself?" I ask.
Avril makes a face. "No."
And that seems to be typical Avril, full of contradictions. She wrote a No. 1 song but will never sing it. She loves black clothes but wears Vera Wang to her wedding. She swears all the time but grew up singing church songs. "Part of me is tough, like I'm really opinionated, outspoken, a bit of a tomboy - but I'm also a young lady, very girly, and I can be really quiet," she tells me. "It's weird, because I'm famous, so everytime I do something, people talk about it. But I don't care. Im going to live my life. I'm still me, I'm a young chick who just wants to have a lot of fun." I have to go eBay some cupcake wrappers now. |
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