{"id":369547,"date":"2025-12-25T15:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/369547\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T15:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:36:08","slug":"i-would-come-into-the-studio-with-my-guitar-and-notepad-and-people-didnt-want-to-listen-to-me-they-tried-to-just-give-me-songs-and-i-hated-that-avril-lavigne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/369547\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI would come into the studio with my guitar and notepad and people didn\u2019t want to listen to me. They tried to just give me songs \u2013 and I hated that\u201d: Avril Lavigne\u2019s fight to create the smash hit that would inspire Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish"},"content":{"rendered":"

BEST OF 2025:<\/a> Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that topped MusicRadar’s charts in 2025.<\/p>\n

Complicated by Avril Lavigne sits as one of the most successful debut singles of all-time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With this song \u2013 and follow-up single Sk8er Boi \u2013 the Canadian singer-songwriter sealed her place as one of the most talked-about artists of 2002. And while it seems like her journey to stardom was fairly straightforward, the material that ended up on her very first full-length, Let Go, was actually a few years in the making.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

In 2000, Lavigne\u2019s 15-minute audition with the head of Arista Records lead to a $1.25 million two-album deal, with nearly a million on top as her publishing advance.<\/p>\n

The label, however, also had strong opinions on what kind of debut album they\u2019d be releasing for her, and over two years passed before she found the right team to fit around her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [the label] didn\u2019t care what I had to say; they had their own style and didn\u2019t bother to look at me and try to let me lead,\u201d Lavigne told The Guardian in 2022. \u201cI was very clear on what I wanted to do and what I didn\u2019t want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cI wanted to be angsty and to sound more like a band; I didn\u2019t want to be all bubblegum pop. I wanted to turn my emotions into lyrics. I was honestly just very, very pure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Want all the hottest music and gear news, reviews, deals, features and more, direct to your inbox? Sign up here. <\/p>\n

Also in 2022, Lavigne told The I Paper of her frustrations during those early sessions: \u201cI would come into the studio with my guitar and notepad and people didn\u2019t want to listen to me,\u201d she said, explaining: \u201cThey tried to just give me songs and I hated that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thankfully she ended up being introduced to American\/British songwriting and production trio The Matrix, who quickly realised she was naturally much more suited to pop-punk than country pop.<\/p>\n

They told her to come back the following day and in the meantime wrote the bones of what would become her debut single, which would be released when she was just 17 years-old.<\/p>\n

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Together they completed the song, with the writing credits being shared between Lavigne as well as Lauren Christy, Scott Spock and Graham Edwards of The Matrix.<\/p>\n

The results were so impressive, The Matrix ended up co-writing and producing five songs in total for the debut.<\/p>\n

The success of Let Go also kick-started the production trio\u2019s career in the music industry, paving the way for them to work alongside A-listers like Britney Spears, Rihanna and INXS, as well as American nu-metal pioneers Korn.<\/p>\n

\u201cComplicated literally changed my life,\u201d Lauren Christy told Music Week in 2018. \u201cI went from having $180,000 worth of debt and being pregnant at the same time, to just going, \u2018You mean it\u2019s all going to be OK!?\u2019 It was so incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Avril Lavigne – Complicated (Official Video) – YouTube
\n\"Avril<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

The lyrics to Complicated describe a coming-of-age scenario that many teenage girls can relate to \u2013 a boyfriend that\u2019s wonderful when he\u2019s \u201ctalking to me one on one\u201d but then becomes \u201csomebody else around everyone else\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the pre-chorus, Lavigne delivers a brutal 12-word assessment of the person she\u2019s referring to by singing \u201cyou try to be cool, you look like a fool to me\u201d.<\/p>\n

The song is in the key of F Major, with the verse chord movements being F\/Dmin\/A#sus2\/C and the chorus progression being Dmin\/A#sus2\/F\/ C \u2013 the exact same shapes played in a slightly different order.<\/p>\n

For the fourth and final run, the chords are switched to Gmin and A#sus2, played for twice as long.<\/p>\n

The electric guitars at the beginning spell out the D Minor mode, which is the song\u2019s opening chord and the relative minor to the F Major parent scale.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an electric guitar in the chorus sections playing fifth chords one note at a time. It starts with the 5th fret of the A-string and the 7th fret of the D-string, then the 6th fret of the low E-string and the 8th fret of the A-string, the 8th fret of both the low E and A strings before moving just the A-string up to the 10th fret.<\/p>\n

Complicated topped the charts in Australia, peaked at No.2 on the Billboard Hot 100 \u2013 selling over 1.1 million copies in the US alone \u2013 and also finished in the top five across most of Europe.<\/p>\n

A 20th anniversary edition of Let Go was released in 2022, remixed by super producer John Feldmann.<\/p>\n

Complicated has been famously covered by Olivia O’Brien and Weird \u2018Al\u2019 Yankovic.<\/p>\n

Lavigne has been cited as an influence for Gen Z pop stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo, the latter of whom has regularly covered Complicated and invited Lavigne \u2013 a musician who she introduced as \u201cthe pop-punk princess herself\u201d \u2013 to join her at a 2022 show in Toronto.<\/p>\n

Olivia Rodrigo & Avril Lavigne – Complicated (Toronto 1 2022) – YouTube
\n\"Olivia<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c[The fact] that younger generations are discovering my stuff and that Billie, Olivia, and Willow [Smith] go out into the world and continue to shatter the mould like I did 20 years ago is super-inspiring,\u201d Lavigne told The Guardian in 2022.<\/p>\n

The resurgence in emo nostalgia also led to the creation of the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas, which Lavigne has performed at several times \u2013 further cementing her legend in pop-punk history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEST OF 2025: Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that topped MusicRadar’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-369547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}