By Jacob Shelton
In the summer of 2002 Avril Lavigne was on the radio every morning. I was in a peach orchard. I woke up in the predawn heat of central Texas, slipped on my headphones and walked to the orchard to pull weeds and drag branches to “the pile” while destroying my eardrums. When I went home for lunch she was on MTV – always in a parking lot, always with sk8er bois. I would sit and eat my turkey sandwich and wait for the next video. Even before the young Canadian made her way to the first soaring chorus of Complicated I was over it. This was not for me.
A Brazilian fan site published a lengthy blog post in 2011 that threatened to blow the roof off the Avril Lavigne Industrial Complex. According to the site, shortly after the release of the singer’s debut album, Let Go, she felt crushed under the weight of her own success and committed suicide at the age of 19, eight years early for entry into the 27 club. To stay in the business of Avril Lavigne she was replaced with a lookalike named Melissa. M was waxed, bleached, and tattooed to look exactly like the punk-lite Canadian singer. I imagine that this kind of show business assignment is like being drafted into the Army but with more champagne.
The clues to the identity of Lavigne 2.0, M, Melissa, whoever she is, have been available since the follow up to Let Go, Under My Skin. According to the fan site, Lavigne’s name is written in black on the album art to signify the loss that M feels for Avril Lavigne, the real Avril Lavigne, not herself – that would just be confusing. The album’s lyrics spell out the deception that’s being played out in front of the fans.
“Don’t leave me hanging in a city so dead.”
Supposedly the real Lavigne hung herself in her Toronto apartment. She was found by her management and quietly buried with no service to speak of. So much for her happy ending.
I was studying audio engineering and Latin jazz at community college when I saw them. The girls wearing black bracelets and suspenders, the boys on skateboards with puffy shoes – didn’t I leave them back in central Texas? College was meant to be a time to be surrounded by like-minded weirdos but it was just more of the same. I thought studying music would make me happy but it just made me hate music. After one of my professors threw a music stand at a conga player I checked out. I stayed in my apartment playing Final Fantasy: Tactics and watching Evil Dead 2. During the summer I woke up early, put on my headphones and walked to campus where I studied English. There were no professors throwing copies of Dickens.
Beyond the subliminal messages of Under My Skin it’s the behavior of M that raised eyebrows in the 2010s. The author behind this theory writes that at the beginning of her career Lavigne said she’d never wear suggestive clothing or perform choreographed dance moves. She was real, not some manufactured pop star; at least not until she was. After the Gwen Stefani aping refrain of Hey hey you you I don’t like your boyfriend and the marriage to Chad Kroeger there was no longer a need for hidden words and secret handshakes. Who would genuinely marry the guy from Nickelback if they weren’t under duress? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Melissa just really liked Nickelback.
The yard in front of my dad’s trailer is more of a flat space made of dirt where he parks his truck. It looks out on where Lake Brownwood would be if there was still a lake but the water has receded and there’s nothing left but a pit of dried clay. I stood next to my car and explained that I changed my major. I no longer wanted to study music. I just wanted to try listening.
“What can you do with an English degree? What is that?”
The conversation dried up as I tried to find the words to explain that what I wanted when I was 18 and what I wanted at 21 were two different things. I was the same person, changed.
You know that theory that every seven years we become a new person? That we shed our skin cells and rebuild our lungs and become a different version of ourselves? We don’t feel it happening. Our new selves don’t split our heads open and rip their way out of the goop and cracking teeth of our previous bodies. This change happens in slow motion. We don’t notice the cycles until after they pass, hopefully we change for the better. It’s the same for you and me. It’s the same for pop stars. There is no Melissa. There’s only Avril. Why do people have to make things so complicated?