The Ruination of my Favorite Avril Lavigne Song

This is how the story ends

Photo taken by the author.

This past summer saw the release of a new 20th anniversary edition of Avril Lavigne’s iconic album Let Go. The original broke numerous sales records, and its five or six legitimate hits have echoed through coffee shops, malls, and other establishments that still play recorded music throughout the last two decades.

It’s not at all uncommon for the music industry to re-release and remaster old hits. Sometimes, these are simple cash-in reissues with the dynamic range cranked up. Other times, they’re truly cleaned up “archival quality” versions of the original album with modern mixing techniques applied. Let Go 20th Anniversary Edition was a much more expensive production, but in a weird way. They decided to keep the original vocal tracks, but fully remix them on top of brand new instrument recordings.

I’m not sure why they’d go through all the trouble to re-record the instruments and not also give Lavigne a crack at doing new vocals and just make it a full remake. I’m also not personally sure that the folks who mixed and produced this new album understood the spirit of the original.

Nowhere is this disconnect more evident than in the third track, “Sk8er Boi.” The mere mention of that song probably has its catchy jumpy refrain flying through your…