LAVIGNE
Avril

• 1. Early life

Avril Ramona Lavign is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She has released seven studio albums and has received several accolades and nominations, including eight Grammy Award nominations.

At age 16, Lavigne signed a two-album recording contract with Arista Records. Her debut studio album, Let Go (2002), is the best-selling album of the 21st century by a Canadian artist. It yielded the singles "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi", which emphasized a skate punk persona and earned her the title "Pop Punk Queen" from music publications. She is considered a key musician in the development of pop punk music, since she paved the way for female-driven, punk-influenced pop music in the early 2000s. Her second studio album, Under My Skin (2004), became Lavigne's first album to reach the top of the Billboard 200 chart in the United States, going on to sell 10 million copies worldwide.

Lavigne's third studio album, The Best Damn Thing (2007), reached number one in seven countries worldwide and saw the international success of its lead single "Girlfriend", which became her first single to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. Her fourth and fifth studio albums, Goodbye Lullaby (2011) and Avril Lavigne (2013), saw continued commercial success and were both certified gold in Canada, the United States, and other territories. Lavigne released her sixth studio album, Head Above Water in 2019. She returned to her punk roots with her seventh studio album, Love Sux (2022).

Alongside her music career, Lavigne voiced an animated character in the film Over the Hedge (2006), and made her screen acting debut in Fast Food Nation (2006).

Early life

Lavigne was born on September 27, 1984, in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. She was named Avril (the French word for April) by her father. He and Lavigne's mother recognized their child's vocal abilities when she was two years old and sang "Jesus Loves Me" on the way home from church. Lavigne has an older brother named Matthew and a younger sister named Michelle, both of whom teased her when she sang. "My brother used to knock on the wall because I used to sing myself to sleep and he thought it was really annoying." She is the sister-in-law of Japanese band One OK Rock bassist Ryota Kohama. Lavigne's paternal grandfather Maurice Yves Lavigne was born in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec. A member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, he married Lucie Dzierzbicki, a French native of Morhange in France in 1953. Their son, Jean-Claude Lavigne, was born in 1954 at RCAF Station Grostenquin near Grostenquin, Lorraine, France. When Jean-Claude was a child, the family moved to Ontario, Canada, and in 1975, he married Judith-Rosanne "Judy" Loshaw.

When Lavigne was five years old, the family moved to Napanee (now incorporated as Greater Napanee), Ontario, a town with a population of approximately 5,000 at the time.

Her parents supported her singing; her father bought her a microphone, a drum kit, a keyboard, and several guitars, and he converted their basement into a studio. Following his own love for music, Jean-Claude led the family to church at Third Day Worship Centre in Kingston, Ontario, where he often played bass. When Lavigne was 14 years old, her parents took her to karaoke sessions.

Lavigne performed at country fairs, singing songs by Garth Brooks, The Chicks and Shania Twain. She began writing her own songs. Her first song was called "Can't Stop Thinking About You", about a teenage crush, which she described as "cheesy cute". Lavigne also played hockey during high school and won MVP twice as a right winger in a boys league.