That experience alone would’ve been vivid enough to give me permanent Avril nostalgia-and then, we went on a family RV vacation. It didn’t go so great: I tried to mimic Avril’s tone quietly, so no one would hear me. I’d seen Disney Channel show characters sing along to music in their bedroom, so I tried that with Let Go. I was still trying to figure out what kind of teen I would be, so the Avril/stereo combo was more a hopeful experiment than the following of some actually organic impulse.
One of the songs ends with a recording of a police siren, and that’s how I learned that songs could have endings-all of my parents’ music just faded out on the chorus, quieter and quieter iterations of it. I was determined to acquire a taste for Avril, so I did. But I didn’t know that a spectrum existed. Avril sang, “Is it enough to live? Is it enough to breathe? Somebody rip my heart out, and leave me here to bleed.” I’d have been happier with something milder: less punk-and-piercings, more of an “I rebel by making cookies from scratch” aesthetic. I just wanted some beginner-level independence, but I got something headier and more concentrated, like someone new to drinking buying Everclear. It’s ironic to get such a proudly multifunctional stereo for only one simple task-but that was true of the CD itself, too. I slept, eventually, at home with my Avril-machine. I always slept facing the door, not for the (somewhat) practical reason that I’d see any intruders coming, but because child me had somehow formed the fear conviction that witches would come take me away in my sleep if I faced the wall. I couldn’t turn the other way, because the stereo was next to my bedroom door. At night, the light blared through my eyelids. The stereo had a digital display with bright-green flashing text, listing its multifunctionalities: TAPES RADIO CDS on and on. A few choruses in, my dad talk-sang gently, “driving in your car.” It’s the first time I remember feeling that superstrong tween indignation that he’d taken something that was supposed to be just mine. I chose “Complicated.” (I still remember without looking: track two). I pushed the CD button and a 6-CD tray burst out, but I only wanted Avril.
#AVRIL LAVIGNE LET GO ALBUM GENRE INSTALL#
I cleared part of a bottom shelf on my bookcase, and my dad and brother helped me install it. The stereo was silver-gray, and all the buttons and speaker housings and cassette holders bubbled out, in that pre-domination-of-Apple era when electronics were unashamedly bulbous. I asked for, and got, a stereo for my bedroom and Avril Lavigne’s Let Go on the same Christmas.