Avril Lavigne-Goodbye Lullaby

I don’t typically review music albums because while I enjoy them I’m not typically so inspired to tell the world about it. This time I’ll make an exception.

I will confess that I am a sucker for cheesy-bad music. I love music that panders to my inner teenage drama-queen. Usually this means I’ll listen to the likes of the Spice Girls, Kelly Clarkson, and the topic of this post, Avril Lavigne.

Up until this point, I’ve loved Avril for being such a high school brat. She produces cheesy music that has no real feeling but tells it like it is when you’re feeling immature and just want to let loose. After hearing the hit “What the Hell” off of her recent album, Goodbye Lullaby, I was sure I was in for another album to add to my collection of guilty pleasures.

After somewhat eagerly downloading her album off of Itunes (which, by the way, I was impressed that Apple didn’t charge me for “What the Hell” since I already purchased it and just downloaded all of the other songs that I didn’t have on a separate album list—which is important), I started it up. My jaw dropped. For the next hour or so, I was speechless, sometimes tearful. I was amazed.

Avril emits a talent in this album that I’ve never heard before coming from her. She demonstrates an incredible amount of growth and maturity. Her sound is different, and in a large sense a lot more pure than it ever was before. Her lyrics are heartfelt. Most importantly, though, she exudes and articulates perfectly her emotions into the songs she sings making the listener feel what she is feeling. In other words, she has finally stepped into the realm of music for the adult.

I’m particularly in love with 3 of the songs on this album- “Push”, “Wishing you were Here”, and “It’s not Enough”. I love each of them because of how I can tell that she experienced every ounce of feeling that her ballads talk about. She’s also so upfront in a mature way. She tosses aside the teenage spitefulness, and hangs onto her inner independence.

I do have to say that in some of her songs she comes off as screaming, but in my opinion I think it adds, positively, to her music because it enhances the point she is making. Additionally there is a lot of repetition in her songs, but again, I think it adds to the quality of the message she is trying to get across.

When I think about her hit “What the Hell” I have to seriously ask “What the hell?!”. The song is such a horrible misrepresentation of the album and her sound. I’m actually really happy that the song is not on the album list when I downloaded it because I would probably be just skipping over it.

In the end I highly recommend this album. I can honestly say that I was more than pleasantly surprised and am more than happy to say that this exciting find will not be going into my collection of high school drama music.