Avril Lavigne Talks Managing Lyme Disease: ‘I’ve Gone Through So Much’ but ‘I’m in a Good Place’
After nearly four years out of the spotlight, Avril Lavigne is back — and ready to tell her story.
Happy and healthy after a devastating battle with Lyme disease, the pop star, 34, reveals how the medical crisis changed her life in the new issue of PEOPLE.
“I’ve gone through so much,” says Lavigne, whose struggles inform her new album Head Above Water (out Feb. 15).
“It gave me a purpose,” she adds of her journey, “and made me find myself all over again.”
As she exclusively revealed to PEOPLE in an April 2015 cover story, Lavigne had been quietly suffering from Lyme disease after disappearing from the public eye in the fall of 2014.
Earlier that year, while on tour, Lavigne began feeling weak, but doctors at first cited dehydration and exhaustion. Months later — as her symptoms worsened and she struggled to even move — she visited a Lyme specialist who diagnosed her with the disease, a bacterial infection contracted from a tick bite that causes symptoms ranging from moderate fatigue and muscle pain to debilitating dementia.
I’m not just saying this because it’s Avril and I’m starving for new music, but THIS IS A JAM!!! Probably one of her strongest upbeat songs. Not sure I love what Nicki brings to it, but it’ll grow on me. Either way, this will get noticed and be a radio hit!
[EDIT] ALL track previews are up on Avril’s social media. Which one do you think you’ll like the best? I’m really digging “Souvenir”! Also, “Dumb Blonde” will feature Nicki Minaj!!
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Avril posted 3 new track previews to social media: “Bigger Wow”, “Warrior” and “Love Me Insane”! What do you think? If you haven’t hear them yet, head over to her Instagram page here.
Seventeen years after her angsty pop punk made her a global star, Avril Lavigne’s back with a sixth album. And having survived illness and divorce, she’s in no mood to compromise
Pop stars – especially women – are frozen at the age they become famous. Breaking the ice usually involves a bad-girl reinvention, if not a genuine breakdown. Somehow, this tension never affected Avril Lavigne, the Canadian pop-punk star who arrived in 2002 aged 17 with the brilliant Complicated, a heaving teenage sigh directed at some poseur boy. It’s not that she didn’t have an indelible look: her low-slung skate pants, tie and ramrod-straight hair are an enduring fancy-dress costume. It’s that she never seemed to want to grow up.
Her alternately fun, angsty debut album, Let Go, seemed authentic enough – she played guitar! The lyrics were handwritten! – to convince a generation of teenage girls that she, and by association, they, were more credible than Britney. Then 13, I was one of them; I wore Dad’s tie to the shops and wasted hours learning how to copy her handwriting. It was music many quickly graduated from, to acts whose credits didn’t list multiple co-writers: the drug of authenticity hooks teenagers fast. But there is no shame in being a gateway artist, a role Lavigne seemed surprisingly happy to keep playing.
After an emotionally intense second album, she seemed to dial back the years with 2007’s The Best Damn Thing, led by single Girlfriend, a Hey Mickey-style rager about homewrecking. Goodbye Lullaby (2011) had What the Hell (“All I want is to mess around”) and her 2013 self-titled album boasted Bitchin’ Summer (ie School’s Out with swearing) and Here’s to Never Growing Up (“We’ll be running down the street, yelling, ‘Kiss my ass’”). She was 29. A year later, she started feeling inexplicably exhausted. Doctors tried to diagnose her with anxiety and chronic fatigue, even though she was sure she had Lyme disease. Finally, she got a vindicating diagnosis and spent two years in bed on antibiotics, certain, at one point, that she would die.
It’s finally here! Avril has released the official album cover for “Head Above Water” (February 2019). The cover features a nude Avril, wearing nothing but her guitar. GORGEOUS!! Pre-order for the album will begin December 12 and get the new bum FEBRUARY 15! Target will also have a version with 2 bonus songs!
Tracklist:
1 – Head Above Water
2 – Birdie
3 – I Fell in Love With the Devil
4 – Tell Me It’s Over
5 – Dumb Blonde
6 – It Was In Me
7 – Souvenir
8 – Crush
9 – Goddess
10 – Bigger Wow
11 – Love Me Insane
12 – Warrior
Looks like not only are we getting “Tell Me It’s Over” the song, but according to Avril’s social media posts, we’ll get the music video on December 12 as well!
5th album: 
