Avril Lavigne
is a legendary rock and pop singer who made a name for herself with a trilogy of commercially successful albums throughout the 2000's and a number of huge singles including, Complicated, Sk8er Boi, Girlfriend and My Happy Ending. Over the course of her next two albums Goodbye Lullaby and Avril Lavigne she began a shift away from rock into a pop/vocalist approach to her music and Head Above Water represents her complete transformation from rebellious rock singer to mature pop songstress.
Review By Lavender:
I do not like Avril Lavigne's music, it's important I make that very clear. I grew up with all these songs and at no point in my life have I considered myself a fan. Complicated has become one of the most grating and poorly aged pop singles of my lifetime over the course of the nearly 20 years since it was first released. Even tracks that I could sing along to today like Sk8er Boi and Hello Kitty are far more in the realm of nostalgic meme music than historically validated pop anthems. But surprisingly going into this album I had some level of expectation due to both of its singles being so close to being good songs. But both of those tracks being good in concept and missing hard in a very important part of their execution is indicative of the big reason this album is such a disappointment.
Boy this album is a lot, remind me to breathe every once in a while if you will. Let's start off with the albums three singles, which spread across varying degrees of quality. Starting with the title track Head Above Water which might be one of the most complete songs on the entire album. It's a decent and passable pop ballad that actually holds up throughout the entire track to bring a pretty decent progression. In the grander scheme of things this song is totally average but paired against the rest of the tracklist the fact that it shines so bright should be a huge red flag. Unfortunately the second single doesn't fare nearly as well. Tell Me It's Over is a horribly dated song that sounds like Avril wrote it for an album in 2005, and hasn't updated any element of it since. The hook is far from catchy and its instrumental sounds like nothing we've heard from pop in years, for a good reason. It is far from the worst offense the album has to offer but it was the single that best previewed what the project was going to be like.
Next up is Dumb Blonde with Nicki Minaj, a track that makes my stomach churn a little bit but not for the reasons you may think. This track is soooo close to being a great pop banger, the bridge of this track, specifically the Dumb Blonde/Stupid Barbie Doll/Freakin Cherry Bomb refrain, and completely blows it on the chorus. It transitions from a fun marching rhythm and snappy, bad bitch inspired vocals into one of the most horribly overblown and shout-sung choruses I've ever heard in pop music. Whatever compelled Avril and the people working with her on the project to include the "stand up" chorus on this already complete and enjoyable track, needs to be crushed, immediately, because it's a cancer, why did they do that. On top of the one glowing problem in an otherwise good song is the fact that nothing else on this album sounds anything like it. Dumb Blonde stands out on an absurd island compared to the heartfelt driving ballads that make up the rest of this project.
Some of the sins we will see across this project are horrible lyrics, cliched progressions and beaten to death choruses, stripped back and formless instrumentals, and uninspired singing. All of these can be found like clockwork on some of the more mediocre tracks like Birdie, Bigger Wow and I Fell In Love With The Devil. Each of which try for something adult contemporary and end up missing the mark by including stupid flying metaphors, cheap trend chasing and meaningless lyrical themes respectively but are somehow only middle of the road bad for this project.
For some of the worst examples of this albums sputtering lack of anything interesting to say look to the inspirational ballad It Was In Me which reads like a simulator that's been fed motivational speeches and has to spit out a borderline meaningless series of buzzwords in an attempt to make you feel something. Not to mention the christian rock levels of polish all over this thing making it sound like robots programmed for pop music are playing all the parts.
Our next rough patch is on Love Me Insane which falls the hardest into trend chasing of any song on the album. It sounds like a half assed attempt to recreate what some younger pop stars have been having moderate success with in recent years. Thankfully she doesn't go full on sellout and try to copy Ariana Grande or Halsey but make no mistake when you hear the yeah yeah's over the songs hook this is textbook cop out and it isn't even done well.
This leaves us with by FAR the albums worst offender Goddess which unfortunately isn't an interpretation of the recent Flatbush Zombies track of the same title. No, it’s a much much worse diatribe. Over a terrible, camp counselor level plucked acoustic guitar she severely oversings her performance and destroys any nuance the song could have straight away. But throughout the awful lack of progression that is technically classified as a song she seems to even get worse as the quality of the singing gets weaker and more shrill to the point that I'm shocked nobody asked her to do a second take. I think the most throw-up inducing moment of the song is the chorus and its utterly disgusting rhyme scheme of, goddess/pajamas/bananas/honest/flawless/goddess. That hurt me just to type but hearing her sing makes me wonder who could have possibly put pen to paper on this track and thought it was okay. It has already become a huge frontrunner for the worst song of 2019.
That leaves us with a handful of wishy washy mid tier songs, Souvenir is an alright track ruined by more trendy yeah yeah's over the bridge that destroy the flow of the tune and apparently call on more vocal talent than Avril has to give to it. Warrior is the closing moment of the track that is a decent positivity ballad and one of the better vocal performances Avril gives to the album but ends up kind of bogged down by its terrible lyrics.
Crush is one of the few songs I actually enjoyed. It's a very simple tune and a cute idea that is executed well and gives at least something to come away from this record with on the ballad side of things. I wish this had been nearer to the start of the record but its inclusion as all is a very welcome moment.
So wow, this is probably the worst album I've heard in 2019 so far and I do not plan on revisiting it at all. The best tracks are mediocre tier pop ballads that plenty of acts from Jessie Ware to Jenny Lewis to Lana Del Rey to Sharon Van Etten have already done way better this year. And its worst moments are as bad as most anything I've heard all year and maybe all decade. This is the worst album in a career that is hard to decide what the worst album is and a new low for a predominately singles artist who goes more in on that concept than ever before. 1/10
