When Lavigne was five years old, the family moved to Napanee, Ontario, a town with a population of approximately 5,000. Although she struggled to pay attention in school, sometimes being kicked out of class for misbehaving, her parents supported her singing. Her father bought her a microphone, a drum kit, a keyboard, and several guitars, and converted their basement into a studio. When Lavigne was 14, her parents would take her to karaoke sessions. Lavigne also performed at country fairs, singing songs by Garth Brooks, The Dixie Chicks, and Shania Twain. She also began writing her own songs. Her first song was called "Can't Stop Thinking About You", about a teenage crush, which she described as "cheesy cute".“ I’ve known all my life that this is what I was supposed to do.... Visualizing like what it would be like to be famous with my music. And always just dreaming, always daydreaming. ”
—Avril Lavigne, NBC News
In 1999, Lavigne won a radio contest to perform with fellow Canadian singer Shania Twain at the Corel Centre (now Scotiabank Place) in Ottawa, before an audience of 20,000 people.Twain and Lavigne sang "What Made You Say That", and Lavigne told Twain that she was going to be "a famous singer". During a performance with the Lennox Community Theatre, Lavigne was spotted by local folksinger Stephen Medd. He invited her to contribute vocals on his song, "Touch the Sky", for his 1999 album, Quinte Spirit. She later sang on "Temple of Life" and "Two Rivers" for his follow-up album, My Window to You, in 2000. In December 1999, Lavigne was discovered by her first professional manager, Cliff Fabri, while singing country covers at a Chapters bookstore in Kingston, Ontario.Fabri sent out VHS tapes of Lavigne's home performances to several industry prospects, and Lavigne was visited by several executives. Mark Jowett, co-founder of the Canadian management firm Nettwerk, received a copy of Lavigne's karaoke performances recorded in her parents' basement.Jowett arranged for Lavigne to work with Peter Zizzo during the summer of 2000 in New York, where she wrote the song "Why". Lavigne was noticed by Arista Records on a subsequent trip to New York.
Lavigne would go on to sell more than 30 million copies of her albums worldwide,becoming one of the top-selling artists releasing albums in the U.S., with over 10.25 million copies certified by the RIAA. In 2009, Billboard named Lavigne the No. 10 pop artist in the "Best of the 2000s" chart.[ She was listed as the 28th overall best act of the decade based on album and single chart performance in the U.S.
Music career
2000–03: Let Go
In November 2000, Ken Krongard, an A&R representative, invited Antonio "L.A." Reid, then head of Arista Records, to producer Peter Zizzo's Manhattan studio to hear Lavigne sing. Her 15-minute audition "so impressed" Reid that he immediately signed her to Arista with a deal worth $1.25 million for two albums and an extra $900,000 for a publishing advance. By this time, Lavigne had found that she fit in naturally with her hometown high school's skater clique, an image that carried through to her first album, but although she enjoyed skateboarding, school left her feeling insecure. Armed with a record deal, she dropped out to focus on her music career, but she still had to inform her parents of her decision. "I wasn't going to turn [the record deal] down. It's been my dream all my life. They knew how much I wanted this and how much I've put into it."
Reid gave A&R Joshua Sarubin the responsibility for overseeing Lavigne's development and the recording of her debut album. They spent several months in New York working with different co-writers trying to forge an individual sound for her. Sarubin told HitQuarters that for while they struggled finding her sound and although early collaborations with songwriter-producers including Sabelle Breer, Curt Frasca and Peter Zizzo resulted in some good songs, they didn't match her and her voice. It was only when Lavigne then went to Los Angeles in May 2001 and created two songs with The Matrix production team – including "Complicated" – that the record company felt she had made a major breakthrough. Lavigne then worked further with The Matrix and also with singer-songwriter Cliff Magness. Recording finished in January 2002.
Lavigne released her debut album, Let Go, on 4 June 2002 in the U.S., where it reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200. It peaked at No. 1 on the Australian, Canadian, and UK charts. This made Lavigne, at 17 years old, the youngest female soloist to have a No. 1 album in the UK until that time. By the end of 2002, the album was certified four-times platinum by the RIAA, making her the bestselling female artist of 2002 and Let Go the top-selling debut of the year. By May 2003, Let Go had accumulated over 1,000,000 sales in Canada, receiving a diamond certification from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. As of 2009, the album has sold over 16 million units worldwide, and the RIAA has certified the album six-times platinum, denoting shipments of over six million units in the U.S.“ I don't get overwhelmed, just because I feel like I've kind of prepared myself for it. All my life this is what I've wanted, what I've dreamed about, and I knew this would happen. I've been singing ever since I was really young and I've wanted this so bad, and I told myself I would do it. ”
—Avril Lavigne on her success, MTV
Lavigne's debut single and the album's lead single, "Complicated", peaked at No. 1 in Australia and No. 2 in the U.S. "Complicated" was one of the bestselling Canadian singles of 2002, and it was also featured on the teen television show, Dawson's Creek. "Complicated" later ranked on the Hot 100 Singles of the Decade list at No. 83.
Subsequent singles, "Sk8er Boi" and "I'm With You" reached the top ten in the U.S. Thanks to the success of her first three singles, Lavigne was the second artist in history to have three No. 1 songs from a debut album on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40. For the music video to "Complicated", Lavigne was named Best New Artist at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards. She won four Juno Awards in 2003 out of six nominations, received a World Music Award for "World's Bestselling Canadian Singer", and was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for "Complicated" (2003).
In 2002, Lavigne made a cameo appearance in the music video to "Hundred Million" by the pop punk band Treble Charger. In March 2003, Lavigne posed for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and, later in May, performed "Fuel" during MTV's Icon tribute to Metallica.During her first headlining tour, the Try To Shut Me Up Tour, Lavigne covered Green Day's "Basket Case".
Lavigne was featured in the 2003 game, The Sims: Superstar, as a non-playable celebrity.
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