What Happened to Avril Lavigne?

There was only one Punk Rock Princess in the Early aughts, and Avril Lavigne gladly wore the crown. The inspiration for millions of preteen girls to wear neckties and arm warmers, and the basis for practically every outfit sold at Hot Topic, Lavigne opened the door to alternative music for many young listeners and kicked down the invisible barricades keeping girls from feeling at home in the world of alternative music. A trendsetter and willing to spit in the convention of what it meant to be feminine, the pop-punk rocker shaped a generation of music listeners, fashionistas, and wannabe punks.

Despite her more than 20-year-long career, and meager seven album offerings, the singer still tops the charts when she drops a new album, easily striking that nostalgic chord for older listeners while engaging with the younger crowd with her defiant-as-ever pop punk glamour. But how is the nearly 40-year-old singer still maintaining her punk rock legacy decades after her debut in 2002?

Is Avril Lavigne still making music?

As a young artist, Lavigne had to fight for producers to hear her, and understand what kind of music she wanted to make. In the early 2000s, angsty girls like P!nk and Lavigne were unheard of, the Canadian singer told CBC that as a young woman, “I was really gravitat[ing] towards, like, more rock music at that time. And that’s what I wanted my music to sound like. Some people couldn’t wrap their head around that.”

Her instinct was spot on, “Sk8er Boi” still plays on the radio, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone over the age of 20 who can’t sing every line. A talented songwriter, Lavigne has a hand in most of her songs and she even co-wrote Kelly Clarkson’s 2004 hit “Breakaway.” She’s taken that spirit for creative freedom and applied it to working with young musicians, helping them create. She’s worked with young artists like Willow Smith, Mod Sun, and Blackbear as well as established musicians like Nicki Minaj, Machine Gun Kelly, and Chad Kroeger.

Lavigne has released seven albums over her career, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and — though she has never won — she’s been nominated for eight Grammys. Despite her lack of success there, she has won more than 150 awards over her career and broke the record for the youngest female soloist to top the UK charts in 2003.

Lavigne is massively popular in Japan — she is the only female Western artist to sell more than one million copies in Asia for her first three albums. The Punk Princess has rereleased several of her bestselling tunes in Japanese and spends half her time overseas where her younger sister Michelle lives with her husband Japanese rocker Ryota Kohama, of ONE OK ROCK.

What was Avril’s 2014 health scare?

In 2014, Lavigne was diagnosed with Lyme disease, an incredibly common and fully treatable illness spread by ticks. As per the CDC, it is, “the most common vector-borne disease in the United States” and is “caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and rarely, Borrelia mayonii.” Lyme disease causes painful complications in the body’s joints, nervous system, and organs and is characterized by fever, headache, fatigue, and skin rash.

Lavigne struggled to find a diagnosis for months, all the while the parasite was settling in, according to Lavigne, ” It went undiagnosed for so long that I was kind of [in trouble].” The Canadian singer was fairly certain she was going to die, and it became the inspiration for her 2018 hit, “Head Above Water.”

Luckily for Lavigne and her millions of fans, a friend suggested that it might be Lyme disease, and the musician reached out to Yolanda Hadid, mother of Bella and Gigi Hadid, who had recently published a book about her struggles with the ailment and referred Lavigne to a specialist. It took years for the antibiotics to fully kill the parasite, but Lavigne says it wasn’t all bad. The experience allowed her to reach a state of being present to appreciate what she had and most importantly, “This is the first break I’ve ever taken since I was 15.”

As of 2023, Lavigne is back on tour and feeling better than ever. She considers the experience to be the “battle of her lifetime” and is ready to turn her “renewed voice and energy for [her] life” and make some new music.