Back then, "Complicated" was the hot new thing. Wearing ties with tank tops was the shit. Everybody was talking about it - wow, a teenager who didn't want to be the next (insert pop sensation here)? Someone with a punk attitude*, someone with flair, with an identity she wasn't afraid to flaunt... and easy on the eyes, too.
Right off the bat, the reason why I wanted to listen to Let Go wasn't because of that fucking annoying single, it was because I was curious. What was the deal with this one? The story she had told in Sk8er Boi was a teenage romance gone bad, past regrets over what could have been. That one intrigued me. So I went in, got the album, went home, found the first empty room and proceeded with the ritual: lie down, put it on, press play, don't stop until it's over.
To say I was blown away would be an understatement, but the why of it is even more important here: there is an honesty in Let Go, an honesty Avril Lavigne wasn't old or experienced enough to know to filter out. Heart and soul, it was indeed herself she had put on the record - not pretending, not mincing words, telling it like she sees it. This was a level of identity I was struggling to find in my own creativity, an unrestrained expression of "That's just how it is." Listen to songs like - y'know what, just listen to the whole damn album. It's pretty much apparent.
Just listen to My World and tell me it's not the type of blatantly honest/descriptive 90's soft rock you'll always pine for at some point or another. That's right, you can't. Because you will.
First of all, almost no album without a sense of darkness has earned a place in my collection. Let Go has that, not in instrumentalization alone but in lyrics as well. The cold isolation of Losing Grip, the bitter rejection of Unwanted, the loneliness of I'm With You, the unbelievable ache of Too Much to Ask, the limbo and indecision in Tomorrow* and the undertone of shame in Naked all serve to show that when we were teenagers, our worlds were actually much more complicated than they would become in the years to come. The simplicity of being naked around someone, worrying that it shows, worrying that it's easily recognized because we just want to hide... who hasn't been there?
But there were notes of optimism. Bypassing the spirit of fun in Sk8er Boi*, songs like Things I'll Never Say, Mobile, Anything But Ordinary* have more to do with conjuring up images of open skies, of small town/suburbia dry summers*, fresh-mowed lawns, of being young in a place of possibilities, dabbling in bullshit. Going everywhere but going nowhere but the tank town, knowing the whole world through a television screen or the page of a magazine, always meaning to but never doing. Friends and brittle, bullshit romances, being young and alive.
Let Go is aptly titled, because I myself can never let go of whatever is holding me back to let loose like this. What I have to say makes monsters scared, and I don't think I have the strength to see that actually happen.
But back then, I was just 18, thinking I could conquer the world so long as I was myself.
Footnotes: 1- Except, punk was long dead, even though they insisted otherwise, and frequently. But I didn't know that. Wouldn't learn just how dead it was until much, much later, but I guess any culture dies a slow an agonizing death only to have its reanimated corpse feed the masses. That's an essay right there.
2- Tomorrow is actually torn, between optimism and pessimism, but the mood is decidedly a sombre mood.
3- Thing is, Avril Lavigne has tried unsuccessfully to replicate this in later albums, most noticeably with He Wasn't, there's just no equivalent there.
4- Anything But Ordinary is a case of being careful what one wishes for, 'cause it's Hello motherfucking Kitty that's so anything but ordinary that it circles back around and becomes ordinary. I'd rather go for Robyn's delightfully nonsensical Konichiwa Bitches for that sort of thing, thank you very much. I think Nobody's Fool is a second good example of this.
5- Yet to see one of those in New York, it's moist as fuck over here.
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