For  tbclycan,  TheBunnyPie,  DillyPawz and  Rick25.

Let Go is a horrible album. We'll give it to Avril, we have listened to this album at least a few times, BUT… she most certainly isn't how the media makes her out. A lot of people make her out to be an amazing, "guitar-playing punk rocker" who sings out her own emotions. One look at her songwriting credits will show that, on almost every song on the album, she's accompanied by professional songwriters (one or three on some). She also claims to be a guitar player? Sorry, no dice here. She played guitar on one song. Yes, one song and nothing else. Even that song, "Nobody's Fool", is so simplistic and tries way too hard to be hip with the kids. She only knows a few basic chords and is terrible with those. Is she rock and roll? Of course not! She is most definitely not rock or punk. Rock's purpose was to define set standards, bend them and break them. Lavigne does no such thing here. Over half of Let Go is full of slow/chill songs and ballads worthy of Matchbox Twenty, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Imbruglia, Lifehouse or Michelle Branch. Avril is not a listenable artist, she's nothing new and she's nothing groundbreaking.

True, when this album was released in 2002, the music world was in pretty awful shape. Pop divas and guised boy bands playing what the mainstream media considered "rock and roll" or "punk" such as Bowling For Soup, Avril Lavigne, Good Charlotte, Wheatus, Sugar Ray, Lifehouse, Pink, Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch, Matchbox Twenty, Coldplay, Yellowcard and Simple Plan were ruling both radio and television. They were also often called "alternative rock" without any further context. When Avril's first album (along with its landslide hit single "Complicated") hit the streets, America changed overnight. The rock landscape went from bad to worse all because of several pop divas who thought they were rock when they weren't, including Lavigne.

Throughout this album, one understands Clif Magness and the Matrix having a problem with writing lyrics that make sense. Read any mainstream review and you'll see descriptions (implied or explicit) like "angst-filled", "angry", "depressing", "original", "masterpiece", "playful", "fun-loving", "creative" and "bored". Unfortunately, there's not a single example in the album to support these descriptions. Not even Avril's sociopathic tendencies and mild, vague misandrist/sexist statements can support "playful" as a descriptor. It's simply impossible and it doesn't make any sense for her to hate all boys, including her partner, or be a psychopath while being "playful" and "fun-loving" at the same time. Misandrists and sociopaths are not "playful" or "fun-loving" at all, that's for sure. And for the love of God, Avril, stop complaining! Life sucks, but you have no reason to say that you do when yours is perfectly fine! You shouldn't even be bland about it! This diva has already made two of the worst songs in existence ("Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi") and seems to enjoy using the exact same formula for nine tracks. What she needs is a pure beating to stop this "the world is raining on me because I don't want to be ordinary, even though I am" and "my boyfriend is throwing anvils at me for no reason" nonsense. With this, you start to see a trend with Avril. She becomes more clichéd with time as her music gets written in more and more routine ways. It really isn't a surprise that her next album, Under My Skin, includes slightly better songs like "My Happy Ending" and "Don't Tell Me". While it tries to get by and be successful because it's much harder-rocking and more powerful than Let Go, that's not saying much at all. Let Go doesn't have anything going for that.

The truth is that this album says nothing. In fact, none of Avril Lavigne's albums do. I could give a bunch of excerpts proving this, but the point is that none of it makes sense, so giving examples of some songs that make no sense is a nil point indeed. Fans waste hours trying to determine what Avril is trying to tell us all. I can say I've already figured it out. Here's a hint: Nothing, because she can't articulate a thing. Instrumentally, it's pretty clear that her backing band sucks. Her drummers (Josh Freese, Victor Indrizzo, Matthew Brann, Alex Elena and Joe Bonadio) are normally not even present and they just have drum machines. On tracks 2-4, 7-9 and 11, they don't even have a bassist! Just a bass machine programmed by the Matrix! Avril also takes credit for music and lyrics she didn't even write. The lyrics that she was quoted to have written are only half the music, so the musicianship must be weighed behind the album as well. This is all generally the same beats, snail-paced tempos, generic trip hop and power/jangle pop fills, whimsical bass lines from Clif Magness and so on. Avril's singing could've been half-decent, but instead it's horrible and she opts to shout or scream. The guitar playing is pathetic as well; since there are no solos, the playing is as awful as it gets, which is a 100% true statement. Let the laughter begin.

The sad part is that you get the sense that she chose not to play because of how busy she was trying to be all "punked out". If she practiced "Fly Away" by Lenny Kravitz on the guitar when she was 12, why doesn't she play the guitar on this album? Never mind. It's interesting that an album that says nothing and means nothing became the cornerstone of an entire generation. No wonder why the 2000s was so terrible musically.

True, Avril the pop diva started a revolution like this: A revolution of incredibly crappy music. Good Charlotte? Thank Avril Lavigne. Hilary Duff? Thank Avril Lavigne. Simple Plan? Thank Avril Lavigne. Paramore? Thank Avril Lavigne, even though Hayley Williams described her band as "anti-Avril Lavigne". Yellowcard? Thank Avril Lavigne. The All-American Rejects? Thank Avril Lavigne. Miley Cyrus, as well as her character Hannah Montana? You can never forget to thank Avril Lavigne for that. Skye Sweetnam? Thank Avril Lavigne. Demi Lovato? Thank Avril Lavigne.

Anyone who can stand listening to Let Go or The Best Damn Thing all the way through deserves a reward. Anyone still under the wrong impression that this artist was anything more than a poor, stoned-out musician whose team liked to mix up random lines out of "poetry books" to make pathetic excuses for lyrics is naïve. Avril Lavigne is just a "rock" version of Britney Spears butchering great music. If anyone is going to pay tribute to grunge, punk, emo or goth, don't leave it to her. Ever. Let Go is yet another offering of mallcore pop rock nonsense. It's music for mindless and non-innovative people. Buy it now. Perhaps it'd be better if you didn't.

There you have it, people. This is Avril Lavigne in a nutshell.

All credit goes to the original owners, who made this art all the way back in the early-to-mid-2000s.