Avril Lavigne
Under My Skin

THE REVIEW

AVRIL SWEET SLEEP.

"I want to be myself and with this conviction of mine make my way, write about what I feel and not worry about the judgment of others..." A. Lavigne.

With my time machine (see review of Prodigy), I suddenly fling myself to 1992, in Canada.
Now I find myself outside the elementary school in Napanee, a town with a few thousand inhabitants in the province of Ontario that has given birth to the Pippi Longstocking of rock. At the driiing, a sea of kids rushes down the stairs making a hellish racket. Only one girl comes out spitting in the face of the teachers and breaking the secretary's glass windows with her backpack, and I bet you've already guessed who it is.
Well, it seems that the girl in 8 years (around 17 years old, if I'm not mistaken) will be able to release her first album "Let Go," and after a couple of years, this "Under my skin": a real point of "no return" on how this fucking rock'n'roll has forged, besides a few authentic masterpieces, entire generations of monstrous, idiot, defiant, and rebel-without-a-cause teenagers who pour onto "fame and success" problems of another nature mostly related to that fucking transitional age called adolescence.
"Many disasters in the history of mankind could have been avoided with a few more sessions with a psychologist," says a colleague of mine, a certain Francesco, and you can't argue with that.

I do a prolonged PSSH, but not too much to avoid arousing suspicion among the crowd of moms, janitors, and pedophiles bustling at the entrance.
"u ar iu?" says the hamster looking at me sideways and chewing gum.
"Cam uit mi che mo' te spiegh ai," I reply in an Abatantuono-Vanzina-like dialect.
"Ai don laic tis facking car," says this mini-shutter looking at my more filthy than battered Rav4, but she doesn't have time to finish the sentence before, with a kick from me, I fling her straight into the trunk, causing her to lose consciousness.
Fuck you, little shit, now I'll show you, I'll... "Miss Aidonlaic" of this tuft of hair!

I'm in the backroom of this hourly garage in a godforsaken dump.

The little brat is well-tied to a chair in the center of the large room and struggles like a tarantula in the sun. Around, the smell of gasoline mixed with piss and dead rat carcasses. A single window high above illuminates the scene with a spotlight effect on the chick.
Stuff that not even Storaro could achieve such an effective light.
She wakes up and fires off a series of Fuckins here, fuckins there, interspersed with incomprehensible words like scit, mader, ass, spat between multicolored toxins and salivary gastric juices.
In response, I give her a backhand slap, and her head spins 180 degrees Fahrenheit (which seems odd at the moment, but I assure you, it is quite a spin!).

I always walk barefoot when I work because increased pressure and nervousness create circulation problems in my legs. I hand her the CD of her work (which she obviously doesn't know), and she asks who the fuck is that bitch on the cover pretending to be her.
I explain the whole time travel story to her, but she doesn't believe a word and keeps threatening me right and left, talks of polìs, aikilliu, with sprays of fuck worse than champagne on New Year's Eve.

I serenely continue my work of redemption by putting one of my used wool socks, well rolled up, in her mouth: I can't stand her incessant prattling with that shrill voice of an incorrigible brat who still doesn't know a damn thing about life. She drives me crazy, and my circulation stops again.
I put on her record and let her listen to it.
"Is this rock'n'roll for you? Is it genuine music? Well-made music?"
"Is this serious and honest proto-punk? Do you want to explain to me why you always use those three chords? Why does the guitar always sound the same? Why does it all sound so fake-rebellious?"
No comprende.
"But do you know the Clash, Led Zeppelin, the Who... do they say anything to you... have you ever heard of Jimi Hendrix?"
She looks at me with bloodshot eyes, and from her gaze, I understand that I'm speaking Arabic to her. It's as if I were listing one by one, first and last names of... I don't know... Garibaldi's thousand: dead calm!

Damn, I feel desolated, sad, distraught.
I sit on the floor and gaze at that asshole of a window high above shooting its fascist beam of light into my eyes. In 20 years, no one will remember a damn thing about anything here.
In three generations, hardly anyone will know anything about the Queen, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, let alone Stone Temple Pilots, Joy Division, Sonic Youth... in short, the "lesser ones." By the fourth generation, let's say in 40 years, there will be other names, other groups, everything new...another round of the merry-go-round, and from the past, only a faint memory from some old fart like me will remain.

Like with the Holocaust: there's already someone suggesting it never existed. By the time the last witnesses die, watch if a new historical revisionism doesn't appear. In 70 years, it will all be erased or reduced to 20 lines in history books.

This is the same: she doesn't know what she's doing, she doesn't realize she's repeating the same things (much worse) that others have done, with the only difference being that she IS YOUNG and still ALIVE, and above all, she PLAYS at being the rebel.
That's all this advantage.
The difference is right here.

So I begin, like a new Don Quixote, like in the movie A Clockwork Orange, a slow education in music by having her listen to some of the cornerstones (or at least some good records) from the past on headphones, hoping at least she learns the lesson and gets to work on doing something different when her time comes. By the third day, the little girl has eyes popping out of her head, and it's clear she can't take it anymore.
Don't worry, little one, I still have about thirty CDs for you to listen to, and then you'll at least have a basic knowledge.
She seems not to understand; she is still very angry with me. And to think that one day she will thank me for all this chunk of culture I'm giving her.
I turn on the radio, and the news is spreading from mouth to mouth. They are looking for her everywhere, and soon they'll come here too.
I finish with the Radiohead album and leave her unconscious, tied to the chair amid piles and piles of scattered LPs and CDs around. It's better to cut and run now.

I've done what I could; if she understands, good, if not: shecanfuckoff.

I've returned to March 2006, lounging on the terrace of my house with StronKo, my pitbull who annoys me incessantly to go out and paw at all costs. I toss him directly down from the second floor so he won't bother me (don't worry: he's tied to the balcony grille with a rope of at least 300 meters!).
While I throw him the head of the old Barbie he uses as a ball, my eye falls on the cover of Rumore this month: HORROR!!. What do I see on the cover?! Avril Lavigne, pale as ever in a long white shirt, dueting with Enya and Vollemweider on harp.
Minibell NOOO!!
From bad to worse! And I had done everything to steer her away from that sugary and bland rock of that "Under my skin," and look at what I've managed to do!? A rejection crisis and the little girl has switched completely to the other side. Now she does new-age-zen themed spiritism and has just released the single "Sweet Sleep," translated to us as Dolce Dormire.
Damn, I've always said it. It's useless to change the past.
It's better to keep what's there, otherwise, it always ends up from bad to worse!

Nothing is created; everything is destroyed.

Even StronKo knows this, who all delightedly brought back the Barbie head in such a state that if Dario Argento sees it, he'll use it directly as a poster for his next film!