Avril Lavigne Recreates Her ‘Let Go’ Album Cover, 20 Years On
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Most of us will recognise the album cover for Avril Lavigne’s seminal 2002 album, Let Go.
The crossed arms, the cargo pants, the smudged eyeliner and the stance that invites its onlooker to go throw rocks — it was the perfect cover for the then 16-year-old’s debut album, which included the legendary Avril tracks that continue to make millennials’ hearts hurt to this day: ‘Complicated’, ‘I’m With You’, and obviously, ‘Sk8er Boi’.
Twenty years on, the Canadian artist is all grown up, and she recently visited re-created the album cover by way of a TikTok filmed at the same NYC pedestrian crossing, to the tune of ‘I’m Just A Kid’ by pop-punk colleagues Simple Plan. (She really was just a kid.) Watch the TikTok below.
It’s nice to see that Lavigne doesn’t re-create the album cover to a tee — after all, two decades have passed and it’d be weird if she pretended she was the same person. Her hair has a lot more length and body to it than the dark days of the early 2000s allowed, and while she’s still dressed in a dark coat and baggy trousers, she now appears to be wearing leather.
Also, her pants aren’t hanging on her hips like they are in the original cover, as was expected of teens at the time. (Everyday, we pray that the low-rise resurgence is not brought to bear.)
Earlier this month, Avril celebrated the 20th anniversary of Let Go by releasing the original version of ‘Breakaway’, popularised by Kelly Clarkson.
Photo credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images