At 23, Avril Lavigne is already in been-there-done-that mode. For one, the sassy Canadian songstress is so over dating now that she’s settled into marital bliss with Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley. As for only making and performing music for a living? Yeah, right — wouldn’t that be boring?
“I can’t just go record, record, record every year,” Miss Lavigne says by phone several hours before a performance in Montreal. “I also want to do other things. I like to work. I’m a really visual person, and I enjoy being creative.”
In other words, selling more than 30 million copies of her three albums combined is all fine and well, but this chick’s got bigger ambitions.
Recent years have seen her forays into acting (Richard Linklater’s “Fast Food Nation” and the animated film “Over the Hedge”), publishing (as a collaborator on the “Make 5 Wishes” manga series) and fashion (her line is due out this summer, with beauty products to follow).
“I just want to get as much out of life as I can,” Miss Lavigne says. “I like to challenge myself.”
While the artist has taken on more responsibilities of late, she’s not quite ready to be a serious, ladylike, grown-up. She’d rather slip her petite form into hoodies, baggy pants and Chuck Taylors than Prada gowns and doesn’t seem to subscribe to the belief that maturing in the pop world means taking your clothes off and selling sex. OK, so there were those two Maxim covers and another for Blender, but even they weren’t all that risque, comparatively speaking.
Further proving the point that Miss Lavigne is still — beneath all the scowls and layers of eyeliner — just a girl who wants to have fun is “The Best Damn Thing,” the spunky record she released last spring.
Where her previous two outings, 2002’s “Let Go” and 2004’s “Under My Skin,” favored rock-riddled pop with crossover appeal (think of the songs “I’m With You” and “My Happy Ending”), this one teems with pop-punk zing and snarling, girl-powered zest.
In the first single, the Toni Basil-evoking “Girlfriend,” Miss Lavigne suggests with naughty schoolgirl flair that she replace a guy’s dud of a girlfriend. The title track, on the other hand, has her bemoaning chivalry’s death and touting her virtues.
In “I Don’t Have to Try,” she declares, “I wear the pants.” Throw in a few ballads and you’ve got what feels like the soundtrack to a rambunctious tell-all session between girlfriends who are partly independent women, partly spoiled brats and all about boys and having a blast.
“I wanted to make the record really fun and upbeat,” Miss Lavigne explains. “I spend a lot of time out on tour, and those are my favorite songs to perform live.”
The performer says that while there may indeed come a time when she feels like standing in one place and singing somber songs on stage, it hasn’t yet arrived.
She realized this after touring in support of her last, slightly darker album and decided she’d like to move toward “fast, fun stuff” and maybe even some choreographed dance — thus, the new album and its girlie-yet-growling tour, which has Miss Lavigne sharing her stage and some moves with dancers for the first time.
Is married life responsible for all this newfound bliss and energy? Nah, Miss Lavigne says. “It’s just very me. When it comes to music, I like fast, upbeat stuff. I like dancing, going to clubs and having a good time, and when I’m on stage every night, I prefer to run around.”
What’s striking about Miss Lavigne is that despite being an international star who’s clearly into having fun and making a little mischief, she’s stayed remarkably sane and more or less out of the tabloids (with the exception of some songwriting controversy).
“Balance is important,” she says. “I work and go on tour and do my thing, put out records, but I also go home and do normal things. I can separate going onstage and going into star mode and walking off and back into reality. I grew up in a … little tiny town in Canada and did [this] myself … so I really appreciate what I have.”
Miss Lavigne plays Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Patriot Center (www.patriotcenter.com) with Boys Like Girls.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.