I finally decided to thoroughly investigate Avril Lavigne’s CD. I had heard “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” (In fact, I had both tracks on network81, one of my MP3.com stations).

While I liked the tuneage – hooky, catchy – and Lavigne herself was cute as a bug, I couldn’t help noticing the lingering scent of product. You know, the aroma of prefabrication and premeditation that you smell when you’re around boy bands, Britney Spears, Third Eye Blind and Alanis Morrisette? That one. It’s the smell that tells you a label is leading you down a blind alley. Cheez Whiz for the ears. Etc.

But Avril is most assuredly not a pop singer, she tells us, she’s a rock singer. A hardcore punk. And she doesn’t like pop, pop singers, and in particular seems to have a burr under her saddle where Britney is concerned. She’s the anti-American Idol, I guess. And I’m down with all that.

It turns out a friend of mine bought the disc, so I borrowed it (thanks Jen). Gonna have to listen to it fairly to make an honest judgment, right?

Spun it two or three times. And as neat as it is in some ways, the verdict is in: it’s Popular Music Product, top to bottom, and in some beautifully ironic ways.

Here are some things I noticed:

° Damn, the songwriting is clever. I mean, real clever. The lyrics are too clever by half, in fact, and the music is extremely well crafted. Slick, one might say, if one were cynical. Pro. If I didn’t know anything about the artist I would have assumed that this stuff was put together by somebody who’d been at it for a while, maybe a hit factory graduate of some sort.

So I dig out the credits, and notice that all the songs were co-written. If I recall correctly, either Clif Magness or an entity called The Matrix was involved in every single track.

Now, I haven’t yet figured out who The Matrix is for sure – I think it’s maybe Jamie and Matt Quinn, although there is also a Matrix that worked with Christina Aguilera, and that sounds about right, too. Oddly, the official Avril Web site doesn’t tell me these things*. But Clif Magness is a known quantity, having contributed significantly to product by groups like DeBarge, Celine Dion, Jack Wagner, Stacey Earl (early ‘90s Paula Abdul wannabe), Sheena Easton, and Tia Carrere. Hardcore punk icons, every one of them.

[*I did a bit more research and have now figured out who The Matrix is. It’s a collective consisting of Lauren Christy, Scott Spock and Graham Edwards, who have also penned songs for Christina Aguilera and Ronan Keating, formerly of UK boy band sensation Boyzone.]

Hmmm, I said to myself. Yes, there are precocious teenagers out there who are pretty good songwriters – people like Johnny Lang come to mind – but the omnipresence of schmaltzmongers like Magness cause me to consider the more plausible scenario:

Schmaltzmonger: Hey, Avril, let’s write a song.
AL: Cool. What if we did a song about a skater boy who got dissed by a ballet princess because her friends didn’t like his baggy clothes and then he went on to be a big star? And she wound up fat and pregnant and unloved? That would be cool.
Schmaltzmonger: Excellent work, Avril. Why don’t you go watch Road Rules and I’ll just put the finishing touches on it?

Hard to say. I wasn’t there. But if we were playing with my money I’d bet her co-writers were responsible for a solid 80% of what’s on the record.

° I bet Avril has everything Alanis ever recorded. Well, maybe not everything. She probably doesn’t have the dance diva stuff Alanis did prior to 1995 (and by the way, how come the All Music Guide doesn’t list any of those records in her discography, I wonder). For my money, Avril would be a lot better off if she’d forget she ever heard of Morrisette, but that’s just me.

° There’s some remarkable irony in places. For instance, in “Nobody’s Fool,” we get this chorus:

If you’re trying to turn me into someone else
Its easy to see I’m not down with that
I’m not nobody’s fool
If you’re trying to turn me into something else
I’ve seen enough and I’m over that
I’m not nobody’s fool

Yup, raw and hardcore and authentic. You can tell because she uses bad grammar, which is a time-tested hallmark of Rebellion™. It’s nothing like what her co-writers would have penned for somebody like, say, Celine Dion.

In the end, I suppose AL is probably terribly earnest about it all. I think she really believes she’s a hardcore skater punk who’s doing this all on her terms. And in that sense, she should never change, because if she develops a bit of self-awareness she’s done for.

That’s the beauty of our system, though – anything can be captured, packaged, and spun out as product. Culture Whiz. Even skater punk rebellion.

Johnny Rotten would love it. Or maybe not. Malcolm McLaren would, though….