AL7 Album Speculations Thread

When I saw ModSun posting the same photos and most of himself I thought it’s for his track 🤨

But I hope they went there to work on his track but ended up doing something for her album as well. My biggest concern, now, is her label.

Didn’t he confirm the collab was done already? I really think they are working on stuff for her.

I wonder if Zach Sang’s comment a while ago asking her about pop punk and if it could ever make a comeback got her thinking about that kind of music again.

I don’t believe that she’s only been exploring other sounds just to please labels. It seems BMG let her have free reign over HAW. We know she has always loved country and jazz music. And I love that she did more of that this time. But I also think she felt inspired to go back to pop punk this time because she wants to do something upbeat again and was probably inspired by MGK doing it since Travis introduced her to him early on.

She definitely seems a lot more enthusiastic than usual.

I think Avril had such a strong and clear identity when she first started out, and over time she seems to have gradually lost so much of it. Whether you want to believe her identity was authentic, manufactured or a very clever mixture of both (with the latter probably being the most sensible thing to believe), at the end of the day she owned it and really made it work for herself -- her entire legacy is built upon that: that very strong sense of individuality from the get-go, the edge, the defiance. She stood out and inspired an entire generation as a result. Watching the My World DVD you don't question for a second that that's who she is at that moment in time -- that somehow a very sheltered girl from a small town in Canada who grew up singing Christian and Country songs at local fairs got her first taste of independence living out in a big city with a big dream, discovered rock music, immediately fell in love with it and with the adrenaline it gave her and never looked back.

UMS was a perfect follow-up because by that point she had made "Avril Lavigne" a recognizable concept worldwide and UMS was THE natural progression of that -- heavier sound, classic teen angst, a more dramatic production to really emphasize the growth in the identity she had created and embraced for herself, and of course some upbeat bops and some heartfelt ballads sprinkled in there to wrap up the full Avril Lavigne experience. It was everything you could have asked for from Avril at that time and the fact it remains such a clear fan favorite over 15 years later should be quite significant and expressive. Also looking back you can tell that the lyrical content had a significant decrease in quality as it was indisputably a lot more basic and straightforward than in LG, but even that didn't really mind as it only went to show she was way more involved in the making of the album and was speaking her truth as the 18-19 year old she was at the time with less restraints than she had on her first album. It felt very authentic, raw and personal.

TBDT rolls around and it's a mixed bag because while the sound is very infectious and aligned with what you'd expect from an upbeat Avril album (it is after all her most pop-punk album to date), there was a shift in her image and the way she presented herself that seemed a bit jarring at the time. All of a sudden she's bringing dancers to her shows and everything is bright and pink and she talks with a valley girl accent, sings with a chipmunk high-pitched tone and seems ironically less mature in interviews than she did in the past. While a lot of that era brought elements that weren't necessarily my cup of tea, I think the reason why it worked so well is the fact she fully committed to it. She had a clear vision, she went through with it, she was passionate about it and we got a very cohesive body of work as a result (plus quite a few of the songs were total bangers, let's not lie).

But then literally everything after that felt like SUCH a watered down version of everything she had established up until that point. GL showed some promise and could have been another great conceptual album, but the blatant last minute pop hits seemed so out of place and the entire production across the album was painfully lackluster. AL was an incoherent mess, the music was poppier than ever and completely generic, there was literally no vision for the album other than "let's make another album", and the fact that she had basically lost all her edge by then but was still consciously writing songs about still being "Rock N Roll" and trying to portray herself as a badass felt rather childish and inauthentic. That very strong sense of individuality she seemed to have at the start of her career had completely transformed into a mere performative act and an empty shell of what it used to be -- there was no actual conviction behind it anymore, no genuine fire.

HAW was, imo, a step in the right direction as it offered some of her best and most mature songs and also the best production value since TBDT. But sadly the duality in the album just... didn't work. I get that it tells a story and that it goes from point A to point B (failure to triumph), but the transition is just poorly executed. If you watch any reaction/review video of HAW on youtube you can literally see the excitement and overall interest on people's faces massively go down as the album crosses over to the generic beats of Souvenir, Bigger Wow & co and as the lyrical content dabs into driving her lover bah-nanaz. The album completely fails to hold the momentum that it builds in the first half and that really ends up hurting it as a whole. In a way it's almost as if Avril found herself right in the middle of the artist she used to be in the beginning of her career and the artist she eventually became -- the girl who felt real adrenaline from music and could inspire and make an impact VS the empty shell of that very same girl who no longer really knows what she's doing and is only half there.

All of this very tl;dr post (sorry in advance) to say that seeing her look so genuinely enthusiastic about writing music with John Feldmann and Modsun makes me (cautiously) optimistic that we might finally be seeing a return to a more passionate and committed artist -- the artist we honestly fucking deserve after such a miserable decade of being a fan of hers. These people seem to have all the tools to make her shine in what she does best and help bring her conviction back. Of course it's still Avril, so WARNING: please don't allow my words to get your hopes up, we all know better than that   But at the very least I can say I'm actually liking where things might POTENTIALLY be going for now. *fingers crossed*

She looks so happy, excited and beautiful in those new pictures 😭💘 It seems like she's found her passion for making music again. From the outside I always got the feeling that she lost that passion after GL came out and to see her gleaming with excitement makes me so incredibly happy!

She was recording the collaboration - both with Grey and One Ok Rock - in her home studio and sent them the files. Not much of behind the scenes to show