Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 23/04/07
Label: Columbia

There must be something really rather weird about writing an album about mid-teen girl angst with your husband. She might have once lusted after Sk8ter boys, but Avril Lavinge is now well and truly hitched to Sum 41 chap Deryck Whibley, who hung up his plank with wheels on the bottom to wed Lavigne in 2006. But any marital bliss doesn't seem to have spilled over into third album "The Best Damn Thing". For although the precocious pop kid we first encountered on 2002's "Let Go" might be wed, she's not letting a minute of it influence her petulant songs for the world's mall rat teens.

"Where are the hopes / Where are the dreams / Where are the Cinderella Stories?", Lavigne muses. Did Whibley not do the dishes that night? See, the trouble with this record is that it's so obviously based in artifice - Lavigne is still playing the tough girl role, but it rings hollow. This is pretty fluffy stuff - she's upset the door isn't opened for her, that he won't pay for dinner, and doesn't understand her monthlies. One imagines she hardly worked out the lyrics for "I Can Do Better' ("You're a waste of time / I'm sick of this sh*t / Don't ask why") on her honeymoon.

Musically, Lavigne's hubby and collaborators seemed to have decided that growing up a little bit seems to mean having really bad strings and ponderous piano all over the odd song, most anaemically on "Innocence". If you can get over lines such as "she's, like, so whatever", recent single "Girlfriend" might be pretty snappy pop. Until you realise it's pretty much a cross between Billie and Vanilla's "no way no way" excretion, but performed with guitars, and appeal quickly fades.

Then there's a weird moment on "I Don't Have To Try", which starts off almost (right down to the cadence of the rap) identical to Peaches "Shake Your Tits", Lavigne singing: "I'm the one who wears the pants". She's perhaps forgetting that having borrowed her big-bushed countrywoman's legendary pink leather ones, she might want to give them a bit of a wash first. It remains puzzling that despite the mediocrity of this record, the charts are still in thrall to Avril Lavigne - in a world where defiantly British female artists like Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen are producing high-end pop far more inventive and exciting than this bland mush. "The Best Damn Thing"? Why my dear, I hardly give one.

    by Luke Turner