Avril Lavigne just announced her Greatest Hits tour (I’ll spare my commentary on that joke that writes itself), featuring pop-punk superheroes All Time Low and fellow Canadians Simple Plan.
And that’s the part that gives me pause.
It was only just a couple years ago when social media lit a fire under both Simple Plan and All Time Low and no it wasn’t for those baggy khaki shorts they’re always wearing or their excessive use of poor derivative emo artwork full of broken hearts and lollipops finished too soon; Both bands were facing a series (and boy was it ever a series) of sexual assault allegations – a now all too common theme of bands who gained popularity in the early 2000’s pop-punk boom.
The allegations against All Time Low guitarist Jack Barakat prompted a press release by the band who claimed no wrongdoing, threatened legal action against anyone that speaks up about their own experiences and then they just sort of stayed quiet for a while until the heat blew over. The press release went over almost as poorly as the allegations themselves with many former fans citing a complete lack of accountability and empathy for the victims.
All Time Low Statement:
Just a year later they were back on the festival circuit and back to business as usual.
The allegations against Simple Plan weren’t much better and resulted in the band removing former bassist David Desrosiers from the group. In another statement that seemed to completely dilute the severity of the allegations, Desrosiers said, ““Recent public statements have led me to acknowledge that some of the interactions I have had with women have caused them harm,” and then announced his departure. And while I agree that it could have been more appropriately worded, there was at least a mild silver lining here in seeing someone actually taking a morself of accountability for their poor actions. In similar allegations against other artists, the general response is to deny, deny, deny and deflect (or maybe threaten legal action) and then just sort of wait before carrying on with life as usual. Desrosiers has said he would seek treatment to improve himself and we do hope that he has seen some success with it. With the way these types of allegations are handled within our jsutice system, the best we can hope for is that people like this don’t reoffend.
Few artists ever see any real repercussion from sexual assault allegations and when the issue is as widespread as it is in the music industry, and particularly in the pop-punk sector of that industry, you have to wonder why we all co-exist in this culture that deems this type of behaviour in any way appropriate, especially when the bulk of the victims tend to be underage young girls – the very same who the music is marketed towards.
So, no, I was not in any way excited for any of the bands on Avril Lavigne’s Greatest Hits tour (just like 3 hours of I’m With You, or?) and as a woman myself the choices cause me to side-eye Avril’s willingness to partake in this sordid corner of the pop-punk scene.
But then I recall Avril Lavigne’s own rise to fame and I recognize that she’s never exactly taken any real moral high ground on… on anything, has she?
And even when put in a position to use her platform to increase awareness of important issues, she’s usually pretty out to lunch about it all.
Just last year at the pride and joy of the Canadian music scene at our coveted Juno Awards ceremony in which only the best and brightest and most talented are awarded, a topless protester jumped on stage while Lavigne was presenting. It turns out Lavigne’s response to such an insult is to tell that person to “get the fuck off” and then slapped the woman’s bare chest before security intervened and removed them. The protester was speaking out against Premier Doug Ford’s redistribution of the Greenbelt, an important and critical environmental concern of all Canadians and while you can argue whether or not the protester should have jumped on stage or not, you’re going to have a hard time convincing me that physically touching the woman without her consent was in any way the appropriate action.
I’ve often wanted to like Avril Lavigne, I really have. After all, I was a pop-punk kid – I saw Simple Plan live a bunch of times when they came through Toronto when I was 12-14 years old; I loved their energy on stage. I saw All Time Low open for Fall Out Boy; another insanely high energy show that really appealed to me.
I was entirely aware that we completely lacked female representation in Canadian pop-punk and I was as stunned as the rest of the world when she appeared on my TV alongside my other pop-punk heroes Sum 41 and Treble Charger.
But Avril Lavigne has never impressed me – musically I couldn’t ever fully get into it, it felt cheap and inauthentic. Ironically all the marketing that aimed to make her more relatable and was very much aimed at the type of teen I was (into skateboarding culture, dressing like a tomboy) felt phony. She came across like a brat and she didn’t even seem any better at guitar than I was so there was nothing to pull me in as a new player.
It just wasn’t what I was looking for in a female role model, but I followed along her career as the rest of the world did and marveled at her ability to create such a commanding presence not just in pop-punk but in music as a whole. And it was nice to see Canada have some sort of response or counter to the rise of Hayley Williams and Paramore – we still need more women in these spaces because the very few chosen ones today still don’t speak for all of us, in fact they speak to very nuanced experiences that in 2024 are largely unrelatable to the general public facing issues like poverty, homelessness, job insecurity, climate change and food scarcity.
I constantly find myself wanting more from the music artists that I grew up adoring and supporting and it seems the older I get the more they keep letting me down.
Simple Plan did the right thing by removing David and I give them kudos for that, but they skirted accountability for their own knowledge and complicity of what was happening when it was happening when they released their own press statement when the news broke. You don’t spend as much time as a band like that does in such close quarters and simply not know what they’re doing or who they’re doing it with and every time you turn a blind eye you are saying, “this is okay, this should be allowed.”
But I wasn’t surprised. See, as a pop-punk kid I grew up in a time when things like music DVD’s and documentaries were a hot commodity and I loved buying them and watching them. It’s hard to be surprised by male-centric bands attitude towards women when their music DVD’s are full of them ‘lviing the rockstar dream’. Hell, jsut look at Simple Plan’s cover art for No Pads, No Helmits, Just Balls – and then recall their music DVD with camera clsoe up’s of scantily clad women and the boys (and yes, boys they remain), embracing their newfound fame and all its perky little perks.
And then remember that this band was marketing towards young teens. Just like Sum 41 who’s own music DVD shows them getting blowjobs in the back of their tour bus. Totally appropriate for young fan bases – totally derivitative of the same behaviour their own idols partook in at the hieght of their own fame that we now all look back on and say, “hey, that was really fucking gross wasn’t it?”
It sure was and it still is.
And so I no longer listen to Simple Plan. I no longer listen to All Time Low.
And with Avril Lavigne hoping on tour with these bands of all the bands in the world that would be more deserving and put on just as great of a show, I no longer hold out any hope for her, either.
I am disappointed and distraught in the music industry’s willingness to allow bands complacent with the abuse of women and girls to have access to such large platforms and stages.
Musical careers, like so many other careers, do not come with a guaranteed shelf life – you have to earn that time and platform each and every day by showing accountability and showing respect for your basic responsibility as people.
For me and these artists, their time is well up.
Crooked Forest 