The Great Canadian Road Trip…Song #78/250: Sk8er Boi by Avril Lavigne

If you were to leave from my house, head to the major 401 highway and drive a mere thirty minutes to the east, you would arrive at the city of Belleville, Ontario. Among the many interesting things to note about Belleville is that it is the birthplace of the most successful Canadian female recording artist of this century, Avril Lavigne. Lavigne was born there in 1984. However, if you were to get back on the highway and drive another fifteen minutes further east, you would arrive at a town called Napanee, which also lays claim to Avril Lavigne. You see, when Lavigne was just a toddler, her family moved to Napanee, which is where Avril Lavigne actually grew up and went to school. The middle of three children, Avril Lavigne always had lots of energy and was an active child who displayed a passion for music from a very young age. This passion was supported by her parents who paid for music lessons, as well as providing her with access to a range of musical instruments which they kept in their basement which was turned into a rudimentary recording studio for her benefit. 

At age fifteen, Lavigne won a talent competition for which the grand prize was to appear on stage with Shania Twain at a concert of hers in Ottawa. Based upon that experience, a spark was lit inside of Lavigne and she was determined to be a musician all on her own. She began singing/busking at bookstores in the area, as well as providing backup vocals for various local singers on their albums. By the age of sixteen, Lavigne came to the attention of a gentleman named Mark Jowett who was co-founder of Nettwerk Records (who had signed Sarah McLachlan when she was a young rising music star, herself). Jowett, in turn, introduced her to the head of Arista Records in the United States, Antonio Reid. Lavigne auditioned for Reid. He was so impressed that he immediately offered her a recording contract. From that two-record deal came Avril Lavigne’s debut album Let Go. From that album came two songs that were huge hits right out of the gate, “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi”. At sixteen years of age, Napanee’s own Avril Lavigne was one of the most popular and recognizable music stars in the world.

One of the reasons that she was immediately successful was that, obviously, Avril Lavigne had talent and a good stage presence. It didn’t hurt that she was a super cute blonde pixie of a girl back in her teen years, either. But the one thing that really set Avril Lavigne off on her way was her persona. As the 2000s began, one of the emerging trends in the world of music was skateboard punk/pop. Even earlier in the late 1990s, a touring festival known as The Vans Warped Tour started becoming very popular. Vans was a shoe company that became known for producing excellent skateboarding shoes. The culture of skateboarding meshed well with the music of new bands at the time such as Blink-182, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, The Aquabats, L7, No Doubt and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Skateboarder extraordinaire Tony Hawk was quickly becoming a household name and remains one of the faces of the entire skateboard cultural movement even to this day. One of the great things about skateboarding that helped it catch on with a new generation of teens was its affordability. Even though quality skateboards could cost several hundred dollars, many basic skateboards were much more affordable than that. Since most kids could afford the equipment and since MTV was happy to promote the culture and the music that accompanied it, skateboarding quickly became one of the most popular pastimes in North America. Kids were using their skateboards anywhere and everywhere, much to the chagrin of store owners and municipal officials, who viewed these fast moving, jumping, leaping and spinning teenagers to be a nuisance and even to be dangerous. In order to channel the energy of skateboarders and to corral them in a restricted, out of the way area, many municipalities invested taxpayer’s dollars to create skateboard parks, complete with ramps, half pipes and other assorted elements requested by the skateboarders themselves. Even today, there are many towns and cities in North America where you can find skateboard parks. One of those places is a town in Ontario called Napanee.

As Avril Lavigne was entering her teenage years, she had energy to burn. In addition to her interest in music, Lavigne was drawn to the emerging world of skateboarding. She was tiny, fit and quite comfortable wearing the loose baggy pants and tank tops that acted as an unofficial uniform for the movement. She loved to hang out at the local skate park. *(which is featured in the header photo for this post). She was familiar with the terminology used by skaters, too. Skateboarding was such an important part of her personal lifestyle as a teenager growing up in Napanee that, by the time she was discovered by record executives and asked to audition before them, she not only brought talent and showmanship but she brought with her an authentic, established image. That image of a pretty blonde sk8er girl dovetailed nicely with the emerging musical trend of skate punk culture in North America. So signing Avril Lavigne to a recording contract was one of the easiest decisions in music industry history. If you take a moment and think about her first two hit songs, “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi”, you can clearly see the influence of skateboard culture in the lyrics. “Complicated” is a song about boys and relationships and is a clear diss to those boys who dressed in preppy clothes, which was the antithesis of skater attire at the time. “Sk8er Boi” has even more obvious connections to skateboarding. It talks about a young man who became a famous celebrity because of skateboarding. It also talks about how society looked down on those involved in the culture, as Lavigne sings about how her character in the song is dissuaded from dating this sk8er boi because it is assumed he is wasting his youth and will never amount to anything as an adult. The final element of “Sk8er Boi” that sets it apart is how the song title is spelled. Texting and other social media trends were in their infancy twenty-plus years ago so using numbers to stand in for letters and using phonetic spellings was a subtle declaration that this skateboarding culture wasn’t going to be bound by traditional rules. They were going to express themselves in their own style which was going to be much cooler than any style that presently had existed. If there was ever going to be a tweak of the nose to society as it existed in 2000, it was to defy the long-established rules of grammar, creating a new sub-cultural way of communicating. That new style of communicating and spelling not only became a popular trend back in the day but has gone on to become an ingrained part of the social media-inspired world we find ourselves in today. Lol!

In addition to her first two hits, Avril Lavigne also had big hits with songs such as “I’m With You”, “My Happy Ending”, “The Best Damn Thing” and “Girlfriend”. For her career, Lavigne has album sales of over forty millions albums. She is the third most successful female Canadian singer of all time (behind Celine Dion and Shania Twain) and the eighth most successful Canadian musical act overall. She is a member of the Order of Canada and has been awarded a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, too. Overall, Avril Lavigne has much to be proud of since she burst onto the music scene as a sixteen year old. Evidence of the lasting impact of her career could clearly be seen this very year as Lavigne took a star comeback turn at the prestigious Glastonbury Music Festival. Prior to wowing the young crowd with a performance composed mainly of her hits, Lavigne had been absent from the music scene after having contracted Lyme’s Disease. So her Glastonbury set was much more than a regular music set. It turned out to be a statement that she was alive and well and still had what it took to rock with the best of them. Seeing a crowd of audience members half her age singing along to every word of “Sk8er Boi” was truly something that made everyone sit up and take notice. Avril Lavigne may be tiny but she is not to be underestimated. I look forward to hearing new hits from Avril Lavigne in the very near future. For now, we can all share in her joy-filled Glastonbury performance of “Sk8er Boi”, a song for the ages that was inspired by skating in a skateboard park in Napanee, Ontario.

The link to the video for the song “Sk8er Boi” by Avril Lavigne from the 2024 Glastonbury Music Festival can be found here.  ***The lyrics version is here.

The link to the official website for Avril Lavigne can be found here.

The link to the official website for the town of Napanee, Ontario can be found here.    

The link to the official website for the city of Belleville, Ontario can be found here.

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