Avril Lavigne is back with her new album, Love Sux. There is no better time for her to make a comeback than 2022: Not only is it the 20th anniversary of her debut album, but the pop punk genre which she could be considered the queen of has come back into vogue.

So why is pop punk suddenly fashionable again? It is not limited to pop punk; 2000s pop culture in general is experiencing a second golden age. Recall that 20th century culture quickly became very popular in recent years again by spreading through social media. Many people point to the young users of short video-sharing platform TikTok as the main drivers of the trend. Various pop culture influences ranging from fashion, music, mise en scene and more from the era spanning the ’70s through the ’90s became popular under a retro umbrella. And now, Generation Z’s way of digging through the past has moved onto the 2000s, a time when they were children and those slightly older than them were going through their teenage years. Those who were teens at the time are now in their 30s and have developed purchasing power—lining up nicely with fashion’s 20-year trend cycle. The influence of emo pop punk on emo rap in the late 2010s was arguably also part of what was building toward the big picture. With its simple chord progressions, straightforward lyrics, uncomplicated melodies, heavily distorted guitars and fast, non-synthesized drumming, pop punk offers listeners a different kind of excitement and experience from other genres that have been in the limelight lately, like trap. It is also likely to effectively lift the heavy hearts we have developed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In that sense, the pop punk revival of 2022 is the culmination of many different factors lining up at the right time. There is a festival taking place in Las Vegas soon, in October, called When We Were Young, with a line-up brimming with names from that early 2000s period, including Avril Lavigne, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Jimmy Eat World and more.

Opening with an indifferent guitar and a distant, low proclamation that “life’s like this,” Avril Lavigne’s debut single, “Complicated,” stirs the hearts of those who were growing up when it was first released—even now, 20 years on. The same can be said for “Sk8er Boi,” kicking off with its energized guitar and drums: “He was a boy, she was a girl.” Both were tracks on her 2002 debut album, Let Go. Its release instantly shot Lavigne into total rock stardom before the eyes and ears of teenagers everywhere. Decked out in loose-fitting cargo pants, flat, chunky skate shoes, and hastily knotted neckties paired against tank tops while she sang and played guitar along to her own songs, her influence led to a surge in popularity of accessories like checkered wristbands as well as board sports brands like Element and Quiksilver among teenage boys and girls. To give a little more background, it is said that Lavigne was originally meant to be a country star. As she crossed over from Canada and into the United States in preparation for her debut, her tastes shifted to rock, putting her at odds with her label. But this was in fact when producer L.A. Reid was struck with inspiration and backed the rock and roll concept, giving birth to the singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne we all know and love. Had she followed through with her country debut as planned, she may have become a singer along the lines of LeAnn Rimes or Taylor Swift. Let Go led Lavigne to five Grammy nominations at the 2003 Awards. The album has sold more than 7 million copies in the US and 16 million worldwide to date.

The media touted her as the antithesis of other female teen pop stars of the time. Make no mistake about it—artists like Britney Spears, who made her debut in 1999, and Christina Aguilera, who was positioned as being cast in the same mold as Spears, had their share of supportive teenage fans. Their fan bases were not unlike those British teenage girls who loved the Spice Girls in the ’90s in that they all loved artists who were similar in age to themselves and who were constantly in the media and sang and danced with boundless energy. At the time Spears and others were starting out, however, the pop music industry in the US had a tendency to change its artists in accordance with the market’s tastes, and this trend intensified as the industry’s capital and power increased. As time went on, the already prolific sexually objective production style worsened, and as teenage fans grew tired of it, they craved a female star with a different style—one they could sympathize with. Lavigne, with her tomboy image that emphasized a cool skateboarder/band member look, represented a different type of idol—one who corresponded to their needs exactly. Interviewers tried to egg her on into badmouthing her fellow teen pop stars, but Lavigne would have none of it. In one instance, in response to an interviewer who was trying to cast her as “the anti-Britney,” she defended Britney Spears, saying, “She’s a human being. God, leave her alone!” Her words resurfaced when the phrase “leave Britney alone” became a meme in the late 2000s and again in 2021 when Spears finally won a lawsuit against her father that ended his conservatorship over her.

Lavigne, who has always taken a moderate position on things, found herself in the cross hairs of punk rock fans when she first debuted. Back then, pop punk was not a fully recognized genre. Punk bands like the Ramones were already incorporating pop melodies into their music as early as the ’70s, but they were only retroactively positioned as forerunners of the pop punk movement once the genre really took off in the mid-2000s. For those listeners who fight over genre, punk had to be punk and pop had to be pop, following in the footsteps of an eternal debate in popular music known as rockism versus poptimism (the belief in a divide between “authentic” rock music and “capitalistic” pop). Unfortunately, just as with society at large, misogynistic views marred the rock scene and imposed a tacit black-and-white structure that separated “masculine” and therefore “authentic” rock from “feminine” capitalistic pop music with mass appeal. Despite many of the tracks on Lavigne’s album showing an alternative rock influence, the teenage star was filed under the latter as though as a matter of course. She was also a lover of skateboard culture—a subculture with deep ties to punk rock—long before her debut, but when she entered the limelight in skater attire, rock fans dismissed her as an imitation of punk rock, insisting that she was not an authentic punk. There was also an episode where she mispronounced David Bowie’s name at an awards ceremony in 2003, sparking controversy over how someone can play rock music when they do not even know who David Bowie is. (She later questioned whether it was really such a “big deal” and wondered how an 18-year-old could be expected to know him. The name Lavigne, too, she said, is frequently mispronounced.) In hindsight, the whole atmosphere at the time was clearly just the latest episode in something that had been around forever. Since its inception in the 20th century, the rock scene has been a macho old boys’ club to the exclusion of women. It was not that there were no female artists around at the time. Rather, singer-songwriter women in rock like Alanis Morissette were constantly trivialized by critics, fans and even among fellow musicians as “sentimental female music” whenever they found success; Hole frontwoman Courtney Love was treated like a witch after the death of her husband, Kurt Cobain, despite the fact that she had saved his life several times before that. Even the faction of American pop punk fans, who caught flak from the rock side of the authenticity debate for the genre’s easy-listening melodies, refused to accept Lavigne as one of their own. But now, in 2022, Gen Z finds nothing incongruous about listening to Green Day’s and Avril Lavigne’s first albums together in one pop punk playlist.

Lavigne spent her teenage years constantly pushing back against that poor treatment. On her sophomore album, Under My Skin, she relied on collaboration less and prioritized her self-written songs, showcasing a more serious sound like that of other contemporary post-grunge bands. While it did not move as many copies as the singles off her first album, “My Happy Ending” featured a sweeping arrangement and once again strengthened her standing with favorable sales. But even this sophomore effort from the maturing singer-songwriter did little to move the position held by those who had been giving her the cold shoulder since her first release, for no other reason than because Lavigne was a teenage girl beloved in turn by other teens.

That is what made the explicit turn to pop in The Best Damn Thing, her third album, such an about-face. Returning with the tinglingly sweet and straightforward pop punk track “Girlfriend,” her comeback differed greatly from expectations, which looked to the shift toward a darker, more serious tone between her first two albums and predicted the trend to continue forward. She even rapped (or, more accurately, chanted) and danced. Her brilliant, bleach blond hair with bright pink streaks would go on to become Lavigne’s signature image. (The color of the highlights is the only thing she changes when promoting a new album; looking back at old photos and trying to remember which phase she was in is an added dose of fun.) “Girlfriend” gave Lavigne her first-ever number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video was also the first video to ever reach 100 million views on YouTube—an accomplishment made by a singer who balked at any need for recognition from rockers and instead sent a pop song infused with rock and roll influences into the upper echelons of the mid-2000s mainstream. What a satisfying achievement for, as she calls herself in the lyrics, the “mother**king princess” of pop punk. Some might say that the third album picks up where the pop direction of “Sk8er Boi,” off her first album, left off. Upon further reflection, the boy-meets-feminine-and-boring-girl, boy-does-not-meet-girl-like-me narrative feels passé. After that point, Lavigne’s attitude, including her approach to interviews, became radically different. She had once turned prickly and spoke defensively when attacked by rock fans; now she was no longer seeking their approval, instead adopting an attitude of doing pop or rock as she pleased. It seems reasonable to expect as much as she grew up and got married, but it was such a major series of changes that some people even bought into a ridiculous conspiracy theory saying the singer died and that the person on stage now was a doppelganger. (The fact that such rumors only ever surround wildly popular musicians like Elvis Presley or Paul McCartney is likely proof of her status as an icon of the era.) The album found love not only from the US but the whole world, and particularly Japan. Sometime after, she released a heavily criticized, very Avril and very eccentric dubstep song called “Hello Kitty” on her fifth album, but it has also been interpreted as a kind of fan service for her Japanese fan base, which increased exponentially after the release of her third album. But it’s clear that the song is not attentive in its treatment of Japanese culture, viewing it only through a lens of exoticism.

Meanwhile, following Lavigne’s continued success, female pop rock singers influenced by the artist gradually appeared within the pop scene throughout the 2000s. Disney stars like Hilary Duff and Miley Cyrus released pop rock albums that became significant hits. Many of the people now listening to pop punk on TikTok are remembering the Disney pop rock sound of their toddler years. Consider the case of Kelly Clarkson: After the American Idol winner debuted with more of a dance-pop sound, Clarkson demonstrated a perfect marriage of her powerful voice with a pop rock song as she belted out “Breakaway,” a track Lavigne wrote for her album Let Go but ultimately dropped from the track listing. Clarkson took inspiration from this and then put out “Since U Been Gone,” one of her biggest hits of all time. Pop singers such as P!nk have also forayed into their own territory by capitalizing on the success of the tomboy character. There was a boom in the popularity of dark pop punk bands with an emo bent among teens in the later part of the 2000s, like My Chemical Romance and Panic! at the Disco, during which time bands featuring female vocalists, like Paramore, also became popular. All of them fell under Lavigne’s influence. (This is what that earlier mention in the article of the influence on emo rap was in reference to.)

And then, from the end of the 2000s to the late 2010s, Lavigne stood outside of the pop spotlight. It was not really her fault. Public tastes shifted over time. Beginning in the late 2000s, the focal point of pop music naturally edged away from rock and toward EDM and hip hop R&B. Although bands like Nickelback, fronted by Lavigne’s second husband, Chad Kroeger, continued to put out radio hits, rock music was no longer cool by young people’s standards. (Nickelback notably reached the level of a joke on the Internet for commanding more attention than other bands, despite all their hits.) The most popular women in pop during the 2010s were stars like Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Katy Perry. They, too, exhibited pop rock influences in songs from “Shut Up and Drive” to “Teenage Dream.” It was at this time that Lavigne sought to put out an emotional rock ballad, but RCA Records, then her label, saw the style as being out of step with popular sentiment, leading to continued strife between them. Her fourth album, Goodbye Lullaby, was released as a compromise, while her fifth, self-titled album signaled a return to pop form, and while it performed reasonably well on the back of her name recognition, neither album achieved the runaway success of her first.

To make matters worse, Lavigne was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2014 while on tour for her fifth album, and her illness greatly restricted her activities for two years afterward. She also divorced from Kroeger in 2015. After a difficult recovery, Lavigne used her experience fighting for her life against the disease as a catalyst for her songwriting and released Head Above Water, her sixth album and first major release in six years, in 2019. The lead single’s message of finding God in the face of death helped it place higher on the Billboard Christian Songs chart than on its pop music charts.

Then we come to 2020, and, as if by magic, the pop punk genre was once again in vogue. Songs like Simple Plan’s “I’m Just a Kid” and “All I Wanted” by Paramore were already being used across TikTok and other social media platforms. Machine Gun Kelly, who debuted as a rapper, retooled himself into a pop punk singer-songwriter to make an explosive comeback with Tickets to My Downfall, which reached number one on the Billboard 200. Second-generation emo rappers YUNGBLUD and the Kid LAROI, spiritual successors to the late artists Juice WRLD and Lil Peep, have shown even stronger pop punk influences, including in “STAY,” a collaboration between LAROI and Justin Bieber, which became one of the most popular songs of 2021 and fought it out with BTS’s “Butter” for first place on the Billboard Hot 100. Travis Barker, the drummer for blink-182, produced Tickets to My Downfall and kickstarted the next phase of his career in 2020 as he began featuring on various artists’ songs. The same went for Lavigne: Ever an icon of the genre, Lavigne amplified expectations for her comeback through collaborations with WILLOW and MOD SUN. And finally, earlier this year, on February 25, she released her newest album, Love Sux, on Barker’s DTA Records. There had been some speculation that she might release a new album this year to mark the 20th anniversary of her debut, but, even a mere five years ago, no one could have guessed the kind of remarkable timing this year would bring.

Love Sux is the epitome of pop punk. It was not pushed out in a rush to capitalize on current trends. According to a recent interview with Lavigne, when her tour was canceled due to the pandemic, her focus naturally shifted to working on an album, and the genre just happened to be blowing up the way it was. It was perfect timing. She resurrected her music and fashion just as they were 20 years prior, as though stepping out of a time machine. She even brought back the somewhat immature and straightforward lyrics of yesteryear, which had, for some, once been a barrier to entry to the world of pop punk. Most of the album’s tracks come in at under three minutes. To some, it might look more like punk on the surface, and perhaps she kept the songs short in line with the times to make them streaming friendly. The whole production is held together by her signature crunchy guitars and breakneck drums, which always stay on beat and in tune, making the album sound like the audible equivalent of a flawless vector image. The short length of the songs seems to make the crispy texture stand out all the more, as can be heard in both singles—“Bite Me,” released last November, and “Love It When You Hate Me,” featuring blackbear and released in January. The album takes the opposite approach of Olivia Rodrigo’s 2021 album SOUR: While the two are superficially similar in that they are both pop rock, Rodrigo took a lo-fi approach to hers to impart a deliberately indie vibe. And Lavigne didn’t forget to include the rock ballad “Dare to Love Me” for fans of her previous songs like “I’m With You” and “When You’re Gone.” Just as she has collaborated with other artists recently by featuring on their songs, Love Sux benefits from a packed roster of featured players. With all this in mind, the album feels like an encapsulation of the recent pop punk revival. Pop punk has since developed to welcome a wide variety of people: It is a perfect fit for blackbear’s style of rap, without compromises; artists like Machine Gun Kelly have made major transitions from rapper to rocker; and popular artists from back in the day, like blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, are still included.

Lavigne’s vocals betray no traces of the time that has passed. Rather, they have become stronger and sharper. Her biting singing in the beginning of the first verse of “Bite Me” is one of the album’s highlights. Although somewhat obscured by her image as a teen star, it was her talent for singing that brought her from Canada to the US in the first place. Her vocals are as youthful as ever and filled with even more confidence than in her early years. The more tightly produced an album is, the more challenging it is to do justice to on stage, but she pulls it all off with incredible ease.

What is the biggest difference between the rock scene—and, more specifically, the pop punk scene—of the 2000s and that of today? While it cannot quite be said about the scene as a whole, the artists of today are more diverse in terms of race and gender. As Lavigne knows first-hand, the 2000s not only shut women out, but they also lacked racial diversity. Even after Canadian pop punk singer Fefe Dobson put out a solid album, she faced constant pressure from her label to change the genre she was working in because she is biracial (unsurprisingly, to an “urban” genre, R&B). Born to Haitian and Native American parents, rapper Travy McCoy opened up about his experience with being unable to connect with other people in the scene when he played in pop punk band Gym Class Heroes. That’s not to say that all of these problems have been dealt with, but there are now young artists rewriting the history of pop punk, a genre that was once identified wholly with white people, and they are working hard to make music with their own voices. WILLOW, who collaborated with Lavigne and debuted as a dance-pop singer when she was young with the help of her father, the world-famous Will Smith, is breaking away from her past and rediscovering herself as a pop punk artist. Meet Me @ the Altar is a band whose members are all women of different racial backgrounds, with a powerful sound and engaging live shows. And then there are other artists still, like DE’WAYNE and KennyHoopla, who are becoming recognizable new faces in the pop punk world.

In the second half of the 2010s, a great number of female rockers started to appear, largely within the American indie scene. (According to guitar maker Fender, where guitar sales had always leaned overwhelmingly in favor of male buyers, purchases by women have increased to the point that it has now nearly balanced out between the genders.) A considerable number cite Lavigne as the reason for their dream of becoming a rock star as young girls. From indie musicians like Soccer Mommy and Snail Mail, to pop stars including Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, Lavigne has many self-appointed certified fans. Many people criticized Lavigne in the early 2000s, saying hers was not “authentic” rock music, but she was able to reach a wider audience and get through to young listeners thanks to having one foot in pop music. In a twist of irony, it was the girls who came to admire rock through Lavigne who brought the dying rock scene back to life in the 2010s.

And therein lies the power of pop music. For many youngsters, most of the songs that first resonate with them are accessible pop songs. No matter what anyone says, those artists grow up alongside the kids, and even once the fans have become adults, they all continue to grow together. That certainly rings true for Avril Lavigne. She is both an old friend for those who listened to her in their teens and a seed-sowing pioneer who fertilized once-barren lands for the female rockers of today. With the wilted popularity of pop punk once again rises prosperously from the ground, Lavigne’s comeback is a very welcome addition.