Biography

Avril Ramona Lavigne was born on September 27, 1984 in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Her parents are Judy and John Lavigne, both devout Baptists. This future pop-punk superstar may be said to have started her music career as a precocious 2-year old, singing along with her mother on church songs. When Avril was five years old, the family then moved to Napanee, Ontario.

A normal childhood then turns into a rock n’ roll fairytale come true as Avril wins a competition to sing on fellow Canadian Shania Twain’s first major concert tour . Because of that, she got to sing “What Made You Say That” onstage with Twain in Ottawa. More success would follow this taste of mainstream musical stardom, although her early career followed a more country-folk path.

She got her first professional manager while singing country covers at a bookstore in Kingston, Ontario; while local folk singer Steve Medd invited her to sing on two of his albums, “Quinte Spirit” in 1999 and “My Window To You” in 2000 after he spotted her performing with the Lennox Community Theatre.

The true start of her path to stardom would come at the age of sixteen, when she was signed by Arista A&R rep Ken Krongard. He even invited Arista head Antonio “L.A.” Reid to listen to Avril sing at the New York City studio of Peter Rizzo, a music producer.

Avril Lavigne worked on her debut album “Let Go” with Scott Spock, Lauren Christy, and Graham Edwards, now collectively known in production circles as The Matrix. This trio achieved their fame in the early 2000s, with Avril being one of the many artists they helped break through to mainstream success, like Shakira Jason Mraz and Hillary Duff, to name just a few. “Let Go” would be a phenomenon when released, selling more than 16 million copies worldwide as of last year.

It was released in the United States on June 4, 2002, debuting at No. 8 on the Billboard charts. It would reach No. 2 in the US charts, going four times platinum, as certified by the RIAA. It would reach No. 1 though, in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. That last record would make the seventeen-year old Avril the youngest female solo artist to have a No. 1 album in the UK up until that time.

The four singles released from that album also performed impressively, reaching the top ten in various music charts around the world, with “Complicated” leading the pack on the contemporary hit radio chart for eleven straight weeks, tying a record set by Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn”.

Her 2002 MTV “Best New Artist” award was clearly deserved after that album’s release, along with the other numerous accolades she got, like four Juno Awards in 2003 (that’s the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy), a World Music Award for “World’s Best-Selling Canadian Singer”, and eight Grammy nominations.

Her follow-up albums, 2004’s “Under My Skin” and 2007’s “The Best Damn Thing” have continued “Let Go”’s success, selling 8 million, and 5 million copies respectively, so far. That means she has 30 million albums sold worldwide, with six number one songs out of eleven Top 10 hits.

With her music celebrity status helping her break into TV, movies, and even modelling, further mainstream success and the continuing ascent of her stardom looks assured. She has ranked seventh in Canadian Business Magazine’s list of most powerful Canadians in Hollywood, and she is also seventh in Forbes’ list of “Top 20 Earners Under 25”. On VH1’s “50 Greatest Women Of The Video Era”, she slips in at number fifty.

On July 15, 2006, Avril Lavigne married Deryck Whibley, the lead singer/guitarist of successful pop-punk band Sum 41, making them a Hollywood power couple for the new millennium, if we’ve ever seen one.