« Built Kerik Tough | Main | Canada: Still Awesome » Thank God08 May 2007 11:05 pm For years now, I've been plagued by an embarrassing affection for Avril Lavigne. Today, my problems are solved. That sucks. The song sucks, the video sucks, Avril sucks. I hate it. I'm cured! Now I just need to avoid the temptation to watch the "Complicated" video and get sucked back in. Comments (52)
Oh, Matt! You're like, soooo whatever! 
Someone should tell Avril that depicting oneself as a sadistic bitch in a music video is generally not a good plan.
Why did you do that to me? That was 10 seconds of my life I'd like back...
My girlfriend was thumbing through my CDs when she found "Let Go". She said, "We need to talk." I had to convince her that I only wanted to nail AL, and that the music was just a fantasy-driven approximation ala Britney or J.Simpson. Also that I was in no way captive to the infectious beats of "Unwanted". Lies. Pure lies.
Going to have to opt out Matt. Just the other day, I asked myself, when the hell did Avril Lavigne get hot? And I like the new song, granted that video makes her look like a Pat Benatar backup singer, but its good jogging music. And the line, "hell yeah, I'm the motherfucking princess"-- just perfect. Let's see Diane Warren or Max Martin top THAT.
Matty boy, you have to turn in your lifetime hipster membership. We could take ironically liking anybody except someone who thinks she is the lovechild of Mandy Moore and Sid Viscious. You can leave your cred at the desk.
Might I humbly request an explanation of the supposed virtue of "Complicated"?
So what you're saying, Matt, is why'd she have to go and make things so complicated? You see the way her acting like she's somebody else gets you frustrated. Well, life's like this. That's the way it is.
Umm, maybe you identify with the redhead girlfriend, Matt? Not to be all obvious and everything....
Ouch, that stuff's gonna leave a mark.
Avril is so ten years ago. The song is horrid. I want some originality back in music.
That's pretty sick chubs.
I think a little differently. I think she is intentionally putting together pop, just, oh, just for the hell of it, really. There's clearly a subtle element of "pop camp" going on here.
It's quite a subtle mocking, I think.
whatever, she's still hot.
Well, it at least follows your trend of Canadian-friendly music fetish. As a proud Canuck, I gotta say that I hope this anti-Avril move isn't part of a new trend away from the Great White North.
Thank God Rush is still awesome.
Some one needs to smack around Avril's management. Playing stupid is very not cool.
Well, she's no Kelly Clarkson, that's for sure.
I'll admit of having shared your pathology, if in milder form. And with this, you've cured me too. I'm rooting for the nerdy red-haired girl all the way through, even after I know full well how this video is going to go. (The Willow Rosenberg crush will never die!) And here comes Avril, not from some marginalized high school subculture, but from the Cordelia Chase position of cultural dominance, maliciously busting up a picture-perfect relationship that consists of two-ended long pastry eating and cute miniature golf. You know, I used to think Avril stood for something. A commodified, watered-down something, but with mainstream cultural phenomena I'm willing to make big sacrifices! But she's sold out even that. Here it ends.
fuck that Matt, that song is brilliant. brilliant in a musical sense? No. artistic? No. Marketing? Shit Fire we've got GOLD. i hereby challenge all of you to spend six months in a cabin on waldon and come up with something as viral. the "oh mickey you're so fine" backbeat, the here-and-now colloquialisms, the come hither i can't sing or dance but maybe i can screw inuendo.... seriously, go write it.
I'm rooting for the nerdy red-haired girl all the way through You guys all realize that the redhead is also played by Avril, right?
i agree with MP. i think this song is way catchier than the stuff she was doin before. plus, her whole rebel punk thing was so contrived, whereas at least now she's just doin the pop thing. good for her, plus she's hot.
You guys all realize that the redhead is also played by Avril, right? Wait, what? *briefly viewing the early parts of the video* While that would make it weirder and more interesting, my general criticism still stands... I think...
No, I agree, Neil. In fact, it's like the new, horrid Avril 2.0 is relentlessly victimizing an earlier version of herself.
Well Matt, at least you could watch a news broadcast last month and not be plagued by 8 fucking adverts for that song in one hour. Seriously, here in the Great White North they apparently only have 6 commercials in serial and maybe 3 of those feature Avril. She's almost as annoying as the French Rogers kids. *numbers completely chosen at random
I don't see how this is fundamentally different from her earlier swill. Pure fakery now and then.
Wow, I saw this video for the first time myself just a couple hours ago at Tower Records in Shibuya (it's on an endless loop on a big-ass flat panel display), and had the exact same reaction (i.e., I stood there slack-jawed, thinking "I'm cured, I'm cured!"). Now if only Ayumi Hamasaki would make an aversion-therapy video like this, I might actually get a shred of my self-respect back.
I'm still in love with Vanessa Paradis ;)
You've got to give it up for "Losing Grip". I thought Tower Records didn't exist anymore.
That sucks. The song sucks, the video sucks, Avril sucks. Her backswing sucks too. She's pretty cute, though.
Huh. This is basically Sk8er Boi from the other side of the looking glass. I somehow think that has to be on purpose.
never seen her before. so I watched the 'complicated' thing, cause I believe in letting people make a good first impression. my impression? that is a weirdly misogynistic vibe she's got going on there. no--misogynist is too strong; i think the right phrase is "male-identified female". all of the values of that video--what and who it thinks is cool--are all straight out of boy-land. AL aside, it's a world scrubbed almost clean of girls--in fact, it *is* scrubbed clean of women. AL is a great success cause she has all these boys as friends, and she's one of the gang. What a compliment! she's almost like a boy, but cuter! the whole thing seems deeply anti-woman in some weird way. oh, yeah, and she's a very cute girl and all. I'm not knocking her looks, just the ethos of the vid.
"This is basically Sk8er Boi from the other side of the looking glass. I somehow think that has to be on purpose." Sure. It's smart marketing, even if it loses her the Matt & Neil demographic.
Why is being sucked by Avril a *bad* thing?
I don’t think it’s good marketing at all. Avril’s old persona worked pretty well for her, and was unique within the context of the teen-pop marketplace. Now she’s disavowing it in favor of more crowded territory. ‘Complicated’ is an excellently crafted pop song. No one should be ashamed of liking it…
Sure. It's smart marketing I'm not so sure. Avril's music has previously been aimed more at insecure, angsty 11-year-old girls in the outgroup, and Avril herself was supposed to be one of them. (Ridiculous, I know, but that was the image.) Now that she's grown-up and married, she's abandoned her previous image for a song about how awesome it is to be the hot alpha girl with an entourage that will help you bully and humiliate the beta girls and still their boyfriends. That's a pretty drastic reinvention, and I don't think it's going to sit well with many of her existing fans. Plus, as Matt says, the song fuckin' blows.
I never liked Avril, but that just "cured" me too. Wow. I think she's going for that Gwen Stefani/Fergie cheerleader thing, but it doesn't work at all. (Not that it worked for Gwen or Fergie either.) On a side note, "finger" and "better" do not rhyme.
so, AL novice here again. I watched the new one, and I've got to say, there's nothing in it that was not already in the old one, so far as the gender politics goes. Here, her highest aspiration is to be the girlfriend of a normal-statured tom cruise. She despises other girls, whether the rival or her posse, and is totally focused on tc (and on you, the adolescent male viewer). Granted, it is intriguing that AL plays both roles, or all three if you count the goth as different from the fish-net diva. but, you know, in the earlier one her highest aspiration was to be with the boys, too, and be accepted by boys, and make boys laugh and like her. still a cute kid and all, and she probably knows what will sell her records. i agree the music is lamentably lame.
Note: to maintain the appearance of propriety, you should perhaps write a few more posts in between this one and the one two earlier; it's unsettling to see the headline "I want barely legal porn!" and an Avril Lavigne video in the same screen. That said, you're correct: this is a terrible, terrible video. Are we supposed to root for the girl who uses violence and bullying to break up somebody's relationship? Are we supposed to be happy for the guy who apparently is very easily swayed by said tactics? Aren't you supposed to root for, you know, underdogs?
Sounds to me like a female version of her husband's cringeworthy band, Sum 41. Yep, I'm cured too. It's probably for the best.
I saw her perform this song on Letterman and thought it was so ludicrously bad that the only explanation was that it was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek and (a failed effort) funny. After seeing the video, I now believe that it is just bad.
Wow, that video looks freakishly like something I would have made in my highschool telecom class....
Come on people, it's just pop music with a little glam-punk style thrown in for color. The strange thing to me is that this stuff should come before her older stuff, in terms of her musical development. You usually start with the incredibly simple pop song structure and then mature and gradually add depth to the songwriting. She's just doing the opposite.
yeah, that sucks.
yeah, that sucks.
...it's like the new, horrid Avril 2.0 is relentlessly victimizing an earlier version of herself. Here's what went through the minds of Avril's handlers, in a nutshell: Who should we cast to get cuckholded by Avril? A nerdy girl? A fat girl? A prissy girl? But then nerdy/fat/prissy girls will think Avril is mean and won't buy the album. Wait a second, what if Avril plays herself and the cuckhold? It might even look cool, too!
Bah. It's the best pop song since Toxic.
You know, I used to think Avril stood for something. -- Neil Now that is the weirdest thing I've read all day. I mean, yeah, in the sense that Betsy the Borden Cow stood for something, or the letter "K" stands for something. It is a sign, it stands for something.
People, people, people - get a grip! It's POP CAMP IRONY. POP CAMP IRONY. She's doing this with a wink and a smile. Yes, it's pure bubblegum. And maybe the joke fails. But it IS a joke, ok?
However, as to the comment about her performance on SNL, yeah, that sucked. But she has ALWAYS been a bad performer.
Matt, I've expanded my notion of standing for something to fit the mainstream cultural marketplace.
Comments closed May 22, 2007. |
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Heads in the Sand
Don't forget the hairstyle! It sucks, too.
Posted by tom | May 8, 2007 9:27 PM