Avril Lavigne is back to doing what she does best. After a six-year break from music and a brief stint with ballad-heavy pop on 2019’s Head Above Water, Lavigne has returned to her pop-punk roots with her seventh studio album, Love Sux.
Pop-punk has certainly experienced a resurgence as of late, with stars like Machine Gun Kelly, WILLOW, and Olivia Rodrigo all dipping their toes into the genre. But Lavigne says her desire to return to the sound that made her famous has been a long time coming. “It’s the album I’ve wanted to make my whole career,” she told Nylon. “There was no one on the business side telling me what I could and couldn’t do … At this point in my career it’s like, I don’t have to be here. I don’t have to be making music. I’m fucking here because I want to be.”
Featuring guest appearances from Machine Gun Kelly, Blackbear, and blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, Love Sux is Lavigne’s first full-length album under Travis Barker’s DTA Records. The LP spans 12 tracks, but Lavigne says she wrote more than double that amount of songs with producers Mod Sun and John Feldmann. “I have some favorites that didn’t even make the album,” Lavigne revealed on the Kyle Meredith With… podcast. “I literally could put out another record right after this one.”
