Avril Lavigne (born Avril Lavigne Whibley, 27.9.1984) is a Grammy award-nominated singer, musician, actress and fashion designer. She was ranked the seventh most powerful Canadian in Hollywood in 2006.
Childhood: Avril Lavigne, the daughter of Judy and John lavigne, was born in Ontario, Canada. Her Father is French-Canadian, and `Avril' is French for `April.' Judy Lavigne was the first to spot her daughter's talents, when Avril began singing along to church songs, aged two. Lavigne won a competition to sing with Shania Twain in 1998 and appeared onstage with Twain in Ottowa to sing `What Made You Say That?' Cliff Fabri, her first professional manager discovered her singing country covers at a bookstore in Ontario.)At 16, she was signed to Arista Records by it's A&R representative, Ken Krongard
Musical Career: Lavigne's first album, Let Go was co-written by Avril and songwriting team, The Matrix, on piano and guitar. The album was released in 2002 and reached number one in Australia, Canada and The UK. Aged 17 at the time, this made Avril Lavigne the youngest female solo artist to have a number one album in the UK up to that time.
Let Go reached four times platinum status and has now sold over 16 million copies worldwide.
Lavigne won the Best New Artist award at the 2002 MTV video Music Awards and won four Juno Awards in 2003 (from six nominations. She also won a World Music Award for being the World's Best Selling Canadian Singer. In addition to this, she was nominated for eight Grammy Awards
The second album released by Avril Lavigne was entitled Under My Skin (2004). It debuted at number one in many countries, including The US, the UK, Japan and Canada. More than 380,000 copies were sold in the US in the first week alone.
Most of the album was co-written by Lavigne, with Canadian singer songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk, and some tracks were co-written by Ben Moody of the band Evanescence as well as her former lead guitarist Evan Taubenfeld and other band members.
The songwriter also co-wrote the song `Breakaway', which was recorded by Kelly Clarkson and peaked inside the US top ten and was a significant hit for Clarkson.
To promote the album, Avril lavigne undertook a `Live and Surprise' tour, playing acoustic sets in shopping malls. The location of the gigs remained a secret until 48 hours before the performance. Other significant performances of this time include representing Canada at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, in 2006. The album has now sold over 8 million copies.
The Best Damn Thing is Avril Lavigne's third album, and was released in 2007. The album debuted at number one in the US. Avril's husband, Derek Whibley, was one producer of the album, along with Rob Cavallo, Butch Walker and Dr Luke.
The Best Damn Thing spawned Lavignes first number one on the Billboard Hot 100. However, the song in question, `Girlfriend' brought about court action against the songwriters, Lavigne and Lukasz Gottwald. Songwriters James Gangwer and Tommy Dunbar claimed that the song ripped-off their 1979 track, `I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,' originally performed by The Rubinoos. In January 2008, however, they retracted the allegations.
Biography by Contactmusic.com
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