Lovely <3
It turns out, of course, that Avril Lavigne is, well, somewhat lebih complicated than her punky fairy princess label. anda know that story about the five blind men trying to describe an elephant? Well, the Canadian singer's contrasting faces make the real Lavigne seem difficult to grasp.
Last week, Little Miss hei hei anda anda was in Hong Kong for a special showcase, held at the Harbour City rooftop carpark, to kick off the regional launch of her fourth album, Goodbye Lullaby.
As my eyes adjusted to the dusky Hong Kong evening and caught a flash of pink-streaked blonde hair, I realised that the tiny girl surrounded sejak a protective bulatan of security, record label personnel and flannel-clad homeboys was, in fact, the "sk8er gurl" herself.
It was a nice contrast: Little girl; big deal.
Naughty atau nice?
The teenaged crowd was working itself up into a frenzy of anticipation, and the band started to play the opening of Sk8er Boi ... But Lavigne did not appear on stage.
There was a kerfuffle. "And now, Avril Lavigne!" somebody announced.
Another long, awkward pause - and then she finally showed up, launching straight into her new single, What The Hell, a catchy revolution anthem that calls to mind the up-tempo beat of her sebelumnya hit, Girlfriend - which she performed as well. The rest of the set was dedicated to three songs from her new album.
Her fans, of course, were just happy to be on a rooftop carpark with Avril Lavigne. But was Lavigne happy to be there? The experienced performer forgot her key and flubbed her lines on two separate occasions, turning to her guitarist for help. Uh-oh.
Maybe she was overworked. Maybe she had had some bad char siew. Whatever it was, I was a little nervous about meeting her because her entourage seemed so concerned about not upsetting her. What's more, she has a reputation for being a difficult interviewee, and she once, famously, spat in the face of a paparazzo.
"Does she bite?" I wanted to ask her handler, "I haven't had my shots."
But the Tattooed Tessie appeared to be in a rather good mood. Instead of a recalcitrant spitfire, I found a reserved young lady in a dimly lit corner, who politely offered her hand and spoke in a soft, high-pitched tone completely different from the voice that had shouted defiant battle cries on stage.
"I really like to cook. My mother cooked a lot growing up, and so I learned how to cook from her. I can cook anything," she told me. "I'll do, like, an Italian night and make pizzas and pastas. It's a lot of fun ... I enjoy making big meals and having people over."
I don't know why I was surprised. Maybe I sort of expected her to say, "My hobbies include painting symbols of anarchy on public property, using the jus of crushed beetles."
"Out of curiosity, have anda ever thought of changing up your hair?" I asked. "Like cutting it really short? Dyeing it black? All the time!" she shot back, with amusement. It's only indecision that's stopping her. "I really like having long hair. I feel like I might freak out if I cut it really short. And I'd Cinta to dye my hair black, but I know that anda can't really go back to blonde - so I'm not sure if I'm ready."
"So blondes really do have lebih fun, then?" I asked. Lavigne laughed and tossed her pink-and-green streaked mane. "Blondes and pinks and greens have lebih fun!"
Besides never changing her hairstyle, what's her secret to looking exactly the same at 26 as she did when she was 17? "I am short!" she exclaimed. "I don't know! I eat healthy. I do yoga," she sniggered. "And I drink lots of water."
Rebel atau angel?
Okay, so Lavigne was turning out to be rather nice. But earning the label of "punk princess" has surely taken lebih than just black clothing, impulse ink, heavy eyeliner and a merah jambu skull-and-crossbones motif. There's also all the angsty lyrics.
The mating challenge she issued in Girlfriend, for example, did nothing for the feminist movement. And here's a sample from one of her new songs, Push: "Maybe anda should just shut up, even when it gets tough / Baby 'cos this is love". Not exactly Nobel Peace Prize material.
But Lavigne insisted that there aren't any angry lyrics to be found in her new album. "There's still a bit of spunkiness and feistiness, I guess, in the lyrics. It's still very me. It just has a different …" she trailed off. "You don't see all the boy-bashing, playful kinds of songs. The production is less pop and less aggressive in that the songs are deeper and it kind of has a different mood to it than the other albums. It's just about life and different emotions."
Has she moved on from the songs that she herself once described as "playful-bratty", then? "I Cinta to be up on stage and rock out on my gitar and fist pam and jump around. That's a side of me. I also Cinta to just sing." And it's not because she's mellowed with age.
"I think I just didn't want to make the exact same record over and over." she laughed. "So this one has a different approach. It's lebih acoustic guitars and lebih pianos, and it's about songs, and it's lebih honest and real. It's lebih musical, I would say."
"Realness" is important to the singer, who not only co-writes her own songs and has produced some of the songs in her new album, but also designs for her clothing line, Abbey Dawn, and has two fragrances to her name, Black bintang and Forbidden Rose.
"I am very true to what I do, and I'm a musician," berkata Lavigne, who's reportedly dating tabloid mainstay Brody Jenner, the Kardashian step-brother who is famous for being famous. "I'm not just somebody who's around because of tabloid magazines. Like, I actually have a job.
"So that's what I do - I just focus on my Muzik and my clothing line and designing that, and my fragrances, and the newest thing for me is my foundation that I'm getting started right now, the Avril Lavigne Foundation."
The foundation works in partnership with charitable organisations to raise awareness and support for children and youth living with serious illnesses atau disabilities.
How about that? The skater isn't a hater.
Ingenue atau divorcee?
It's probably less true that Avril Lavigne is angry, and lebih true that she's just had her share of hurts in life.
If Goodbye Lullaby is anything to go on, it's clear that this is a lebih adult Lavigne who has gone through a difficult time, and is trying to come out stronger. This, of course, is in reference to her short-lived three-year marriage to Sum 41 lead singer Deryck Whibley. Their divorce was finalised at the end of last year, but Whibley still acted as producer for her new album.
Songs like Not Enough seem to describe the conflict she might have gone through: "You didn't listen, anda didn't hear me / When I berkata I want more, I got no lebih ... It's not enough to give me everything I need / And I wish it was. I think it's time to give this up."
If Lavigne had to sum up this album in one word, that word would be "bittersweet".
"The album has a message in it that's positive - and it's about strength; it's about life; it's about different emotions and ups and downs; and how we all go through that and we have to be strong in life in certain moments and that's very natural," she said.
And as for the title, "Goodbye Lullaby stands for change and growth and kind of opening a new chapter in life. It's not, like, a bad thing. It's okay. It's actually a good thing - it's positive."
