‘Some things never changed after all these years – I still love skater boys!” proclaims a giddy Avril Lavigne to a sold out Alexandra Palace. An explosion of red confetti, cheap guitar riffs, and bratty pop punk vocals about an unlikely romance between a girl who does ballet and an adolescent punk then combine to inspire non-stop whooping from the crowd.
When Lavigne, now 38, initially released Sk8er Boi in 2002, she was a teenager providing mixtape anthems for jorts-wearing teens who snogged one another in mall car parks. This is reflected by tonight’s nostalgic outfit (red tartan skirt and hole-ridden tights) and a largely thirtysomething audience, with the skater boys now skater dads. But nostalgia is one hell of a drug, and it’s hard not to feel re-energised by a crowd who treat Ally Pally like it’s the raucous dancefloor at a high school reunion, air guitars and all.
Her angsty brand of confessional bedroom bops about heartbreak and renewal have inspired everyone from Billie Eilish to Paramore and Rico Nasty, with the current pop punk revival just as much down to Avril Lavigne as it is, say, Blink-182 or Fall Out Boy, and the Canadian singer remains a great performer. A high falsetto amid the rousing hook of Complicated and the spiky delivery of its withering lyrics (particularly the line “you try to be cool, but you look like a fool to me”) show her vocals remain strong.
Yet just like revisiting embarrassing photos in your high school yearbook, this show also occasionally feels like an awkward trip down memory lane. The twee Hello Kitty, a horribly irritating EDM-inflected 2013 song that treats Japanese pop culture like a disposable prop, and a cheap pop punk cover of the Spice Girls’ Wannabe both fail to hit the mark; Lavigne sings them like she’s going through the motions.
However, the surge of I’m With You during the encore, and its violin-laden howls about trying to figure out life, lift this gig back into greatness. There are tears from many in the crowd, perhaps transported back to their first kiss. Lavigne might now be a woman jarringly singing songs rooted in a teenage girl perspective, but that escapism is much-needed today, and Lavigne certainly knows how to take you there. As her 2013 hit goes, here’s to never growing up.
