Avril has a best-selling fashion and lifestyle brand called Abbey Dawn, named after Lavigne’s childhood nickname. She is not just the name behind the brand, but also the designer, utilizing skulls, zebras, and hot pinks and blacks.
Avril is from a town called Napanee, Ontario, which is so small that the local pizza joint has named a pizza after her. For the record, it contains pepperoni, olives, and mushrooms. No pineapple. Because she’s not a monster.
She was named “Avril” by her father after the French word for the month of April. Good thing she wasn’t born in October.
A self-taught musician, Avril can play the guitar, piano, and drums.
Avril’s favorite band is Nirvana, which is a bit surprising considering she’s young enough to have been the baby on the album cover for Nevermind.
At the age of 15, Lavigne won a radio contest and was given the opportunity to appear on stage with Shania Twain, Canadian music royalty. Lavigne apparently told Shania that she was going to become “a famous singer.”
Lavigne was discovered by her first professional manager, Cliff Fabri, while singing country covers in a Chapters bookstore in Kingston, Ontario.
After Antonio “L.A.” Reid, then head of Arista Records, heard Lavigne sing, he immediately signed her to deal worth $1.25 million with a $900,000 advance. At this point, Avril dropped out of school to focus on her music career.
Working with The Matrix production team, she created two songs (including “Complicated”) that resulted in a major breakthrough in terms of finding Lavigne an individual sound. “Complicated” ended up being her debut single.
When she first arrived on the scene, she was described by many as the “Anti-Britney” due to her less commercial and “real” image. Avril argued against this, saying, “I'm not made up and I'm not being told what to say and how to act, so they have to call me the anti-Britney, which I'm not."
Avril represented Canada at the closing ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. She performed her song “Who Knows.”
She also performed at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC along with then-husband Chad Kroeger, Alanis Morissette, and Simple Plan.
Continuing her long lasting relationship with the Olympic games, she released a single, “Fly,” in association with the 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games.
Sir Ian McKellen once described Lavigne as “a punk chanteuse, a post-grunge valkyrie, with the wounded soul of a poet and the explosive pugnacity of a Canadian." Sir Ian McKellen may also be a poet...
In 2006, Avril married Deryck Whibley, lead singer and guitarist for the band Sum 41. Deryck secretly took Lavigne’s name.
The couple was divorced after four years (just in time for the next Olympics), but Whibley and Lavigne still enjoyed a working relationship, with Whibley producing her fourth album and the single “Alice” written for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.
In 2007, Avril was featured in a two-volume graphic novel titled “Make 5 Wishes” about a shy girl named Hana who, upon meeting her hero Avril Lavigne, learns to overcome her fears and address the stress of modern angsty teenage life through escapism.
After dating for one month, she married Chad Kroeger of Nickelback.
Three years later, Lavigne announced on Instagram that she and Kroeger were separating, presumably after David Grohl’s mean tweets made her reconsider the union.
Poor Nickelback. They have some awesome songs!
In 2015, Lavigne revealed that she had Lyme Disease, which is transmitted via infected ticks.
Adult deer tick. Now this article is educational.
Avril has co-written songs for other artists, including the song “Breakaway” sung by Kelly Clarkson. “Breakaway” was originally intended for Lavigne’s debut studio album Let Go but was deemed better suited to Kelly.
She’s appeared as actress in the films Over the Hedge (as a possum), Fast Food Nation (as a vegetarian activist), and The Flock (as the girlfriend of a serial abuser).
Inspired by her then-boyfriend Brody Jenner, Avril had the name “Brody” tattooed beneath her right breast. They broke up two years later. It’s okay. She can just tell people she’s a huge fan of Adrien Brody.
These designs were featured in an online game called Stardoll, where you can dress Avril Lavigne and do her makeup. It’s a game targeted at young girls and creepy men.
Avril has two perfumes, Black Star and Forbidden Rose, in case any of you have ever wanted to smell like Avril Lavigne and attract Chad Kroeger.
In a demonstration of his in-progress artificial intelligence system Jarvis, named after Tony Stark's AI from the Iron Man movies, Zuckerberg asked the program to "play us some good Nickelback songs."
"I'm sorry Mark, I'm afraid I can't do that," replied Jarvis. "There are no good Nickelback songs."
Avril fired back over Twitter, accusing him of bullying Nickelback.
Avril is famous for having quite a few tattoos including ink of the F word on her ribs.
My mom never told me how her best friend died. Years later, I was using her phone when I made an utterly chilling discovery.
Madame de Pompadour was the alluring chief mistress of King Louis XV, but few people know her dark history—or the chilling secret shared by her and Louis.
I tried to get my ex-wife served with divorce papers. I knew that she was going to take it badly, but I had no idea about the insane lengths she would go to just to get revenge and mess with my life.
Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIII’s rejected queen—but few people know her even darker history.
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