When Lavigne and her band of "sk8er" boys finally made it to the stage (sans a necktie, which she stopped wearing once she saw girls imitating her), the sell-out crowd's screams nearly drowned out the guitar riffs. Standing at approximately five foot nothing, the 17-year-old Canadian belted out her edgy, hook-filled pop songs in a full and beautiful voice, sometimes bouncing to the beat while she sang, sometimes playing her guitar.

Early in the show, she dropped herself into the crowd and let a couple of star struck girls help her sing the words "I'd rather be anything but ordinary, please." At other points, she pleaded for the house lights to be turned up so she could see her fans and tell them they were beautiful.

The set was a quick 45 minutes - basically the same length as Lavigne's debut record, "Let Go," which has yielded five Grammy nominations. But that's all the crowd was looking for, as singing along with the songs seemed to be the order of the evening. During hits like "Complicated," so many people were singing along, it sounded like Lavigne was getting extra musical accompaniment from the high-pitched chorus of the Peanuts gang.

~End~

A version of this story originally appeared in the Columbus Dispatch in January, 2003.
These stories are © Tracy Zollinger Turner, and cannot be reprinted without her express, written permission

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