Avril Lavigne

A great deal has happened in Avril Lavigne's life since she released her debut album, 'Let Go', in 2002, when she was 17 years old. That album snagged eight Grammy nominations and four Juno Awards (including Album of the Year and New Artist of the Year), spawned the anthemic hit singles 'Complicated', 'Sk8ter Boy', and 'I'm With You', and sold more than 16 million copies world-wide.

'Under My Skin cemented' the Ontario native's superstardom, entering U.S., Canadian, and U.K. charts at #1, unleashing smash singles 'Don't Tell Me' and 'My Happy Ending', and collecting three more Juno Awards along the way.

In 2006, Avril married Sum 41's Deryck Whibley and branched out into acting, appearing in Richard Linklater's 'Fast Food Nation' and lending her voice to Dreamworks' animated film 'Over the Hedge'.

Avril Lavigne is a girl who knows what she wants. And when it came to writing her eagerly awaited third album, 'The Best Damn Thing', she had one very clear goal in mind: To make it fun. While touring in 2004 for her previous album, 'Under My Skin', which sold more than eight million copies worldwide, the Canadian-born punk-pop dynamo found that her favorite songs to play were the faster, more up-tempo songs-so she resolved to make a record that captured the kind of high-spirited, full-throttle energy that she loved to unleash on-stage.

'The Best Damn Thing' is brimming with gutsy guitar riffs, instantaneously catchy sing-along party-starting choruses, power pop punk, and rebellious rock 'n' roll attitude. It's a marked departure from the darker, more introspective tone of 'Under My Skin - and on tracks such as the defiant, riotous, kiss-off-to-a-cheating-boyfriend 'Everything Back But You' Avril took pleasure in creating scenarios for her lyrics that weren't, as she says, "straight out of my diary."

The result is a collection of songs that reveal just how far she's evolved as a songwriter and singer, from the sassy, empowering 'I Can Do Better' (one of Avril's personal favorites) to the irrepressible first single 'Girlfriend' - which unexpectedly combines a hip-hop beat with beefy power chords, hand-claps, and a chanted girl-group-style chorus with a punk rock twist-to the emotional ballad 'Keep Holding On' - which she wrote at the request of 20th Century Fox for the studio's fantasy/adventure film 'Eragon'.

As an artist with a keen and well-trained ear for powerful, magnetic pop melodies, Avril was intensely involved in every aspect of 'The Best Damn Thing''s creation: From being fiercely independent while writing her own songs ("I didn't have an A&R guy on this record," she emphasizes. "I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound"), to choosing her producers and musical collaborators, to obsessively going back and tweaking guitar tones and drumbeats in the studio, she worked hard to ensure that it would be her best record yet.

She may be a bit more sophisticated these days, but she's still peerless, and still fearless. 'The Best Damn Thing' is Avril Lavigne at a new stage in her life; she's passed through the shadows of teen angst and emerged in a spotlight, ready to have fun and rock out and yes, even dance. It is, just as she intended, the best damn thing she's ever done.