Nearly four years have elapsed since Avril Lavigne last released a full-length album, but though her musical profile has been slightly smaller over the past few years, she has expanded her horizons elsewhere. Lavigne has a fragrance, a fashion line and a whole new personal life (she broke it off with husband Deryck Whibley in 2009), which means that she might as well be an entirely new human being on her new album Goodbye Lullaby. The Candian star's fourth album moves further away from the bubblegum punk of her earlier work into a more worldly brand of sugary pop (the first single "What the Hell" is yet another single that, like "Girlfriend," Gwen Stefani could have easily recorded). Is it good to have Lavigne back, or do critics wish she had stayed focused on other projects?
The critics seem pretty split, though many seem to begrudgingly respect what Lavigne and her producers have put together. "Goodbye Lullaby is lovelorn and introspective, full of gusty tunes with a surprising message: Avril cares," wrote Jody Rosen for Rolling Stone. "In the jangling power ballad 'Wish You Were Here,' she confesses, 'There's a girl that gives a s---/ Behind this wall.' ... [Goodbye Lullaby] is an especially sturdy radio-pop record whose catchy tunes come in different flavors: unabashed love songs, tender consolations and romantic post-mortems."
The New York Times also gave a nod in Lavigne's direction, suggesting she has learned well from another Canadian who found growing up difficult. "Searching for a more adult voice, Ms. Lavigne has chosen an unexpected prototype: a fellow Canadian teenage star who grew up, Alanis Morissette," wrote critic Jon Pareles. "In various songs Ms. Lavigne emulates Ms. Morissette's bleating glottal stops and, particularly in 'Push' and in 'Darlin' — a song Ms. Lavigne says she wrote when she was 14 — Ms. Morissette's placement of choppy vocal phrases against the band's marchlike stolidity." Pareles also noted that, in a twist, the more precisely-crafted songs come across as more honest than the tunes she worked on by herself. "It's the pop-factory material, not Ms. Lavigne's own presumably more personal songs, that offers details, humor and a sense of letting go," Pareles wrote. "Her grown-up seriousness could use a little more of them."
The idea that Lavigne's own personal instincts might be problematic was echoed by Entertainment Weekly. "Surprisingly, it's the early tunes, many concocted in the bunker of Swedish genius Max Martin, that show the most personality: The Farfisa-fueled 'What the Hell' and the sassy 'Smile,' with its talk of doctored drinks and blackout tattoos, restore Avril to her rightful place ahead of Katy Perry and Ke$ha in the Sisterhood of the Negligible Pants," wrote critic Andy Greenwald. "But when left alone — on gauzy ballads like 'Everybody Hurts' (an original that somehow manages to be less deep than the R.E.M. standard) — the recently divorced 26-year-old seems desperate to share an artistic inner self that's far from fully formed."
For most, the quality of the pop tunes on Goodbye Lullaby outweighs the songs that bring the album down, but The A.V. Club's Marcus Gilmer was frustrated by the album's inconsistency. "Lullaby finds Lavigne caught in an awkward transition between her bubblegum past and an ill-defined 'adult' sound," Gilmer wrote. "Lullaby moves tentatively toward MOR pop on overproduced, mid-tempo songs that abandon the compulsively listenable pop-punk that remains Lavigne's most inviting calling card. ... Lavigne is a divorced singer-songwriter about to enter her late 20s, but on Lullaby, she would've been better off not acting her age."
Still, most people seem to find Goodbye Lullaby a fascinating, complicated and occasionally brilliant experiment. "Lavigne is at her best when she can balance the sugar and the spice. On 'Smile,' one of the tracks that she wrote herself, Lavigne celebrates black-out nights, possibly with her ex-husband Deryck Whibley of Sum 41, the kind that result in a new tattoo," Los Angeles Times critic Margaret Wappler wrote. "She proudly calls herself crazy and out of control, before leading into a chorus that's all gushy about love. It's the little girl fantasizing in the quiet moments after a grown woman's excesses. And you better not have a problem with her wanting it both ways."
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