Avril Lavigne - Head Above Water

Pitchfork 55

Though an interesting showcase of her powerful and newfound voice, the Canadian pop star’s comeback too often lapses into the rote, the stale, or the uninspired.

The Guardian 0

She sold millions as a teenager, but now the Canadian is nude on her album cover to prove she is a serious singer-songwriter

Genuine, non-snarky question: why is Avril Lavigne still here? You would have been a fool to bet against her original shtick being huge in 2002. An era in which Busted bestrode teenage affections like a tri-headed, invariably gurning colossus was clearly ripe for a Canadian teen dressed as a schoolgirl, sticking her tongue out, doing devil-horn fingers and peddling battery-farmed pop-punk aimed squarely at teens. And it was huge: her debut album Let Go sold 16m copies. Equally, however, you would have been brave to bet on Avril Lavigne hanging around. You could marvel at the precision-tooling that went into Sk8er Boi without thinking it was necessarily the stuff on which protracted careers were founded. A gap in the market had been identified and exploited, a great deal of money made, and its audience were bound to grow up and move on, right?

Related: Still complicated: Avril Lavigne: 'I’ve had to fight people on this journey'