BILLBOARD INTERVIEW: Avril Lavigne: New Album Is 'All Over The Place' |
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Singer's fifth full-length will include pop-rock tunes, piano ballads and a Marilyn Manson collaboration. First, a clarification: when Avril Lavigne kicks off her new single "Here's To Never Growing Up" with the line "Singing Radiohead at the top of our lungs," she is not talking about "The Gloaming." "'Creep'!" she exclaims when asked about the line. The explanation makes sense: like the 1992 Radiohead classic, "Here's To Never Growing Up" features a fat, sweeping hook that's more fun to sing along to with a handful of other people by your side. The lead single from Lavigne's forthcoming fifth album, due out this summer, was released on late Monday night (Apr. 8), and previews what the 28-year-old singer-songwriter describes as a highly eclectic new full-length. "The record's really diverse," Lavigne tells Billboard. "We've got these pop-rock tunes, and then these piano ballads with orchestras. I have a heavier song that Marilyn Manson's on called 'Bad Girl,' and then I've got a song called 'Hello Kitty' that sounds like nothing I've done before. 'Here's To Never Growing Up' is one of the rock tunes on it, but it's all over the place." The still-untitled new LP is a departure for Lavigne in the sense that the album marks her first new record for Epic after leaving RCA Records. But the follow-up to 2011's "Goodbye Lullaby" will likely be a radical thematic change from its predecessor: that album, led by the single "What The Hell," was a more pensive effort that was co-produced by the singer's ex-husband, Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley. "Goodbye Lullaby's" commercial performance was also underwhelming, selling 363,000 copies to date according to Nielsen SoundScan (Lavigne's best-seller is her 2002 debut "Let Go," with 6.8 million copies sold). |