Avril Lavigne has officially won TikTok. Well, not officially. TikTok, despite its place as the new altar of cool for many a young digital-savvy spectator, is not The Hunger Games. But the Canadian singer has made her debut on the platform in the most impactful way possible, with fans old and new taking to the internet to express their awe.
In 2002, Avril released what would become one of her most memorable and career-defining singles: Sk8er Boi. Almost twenty years later, it was a classic choice to make her first mark on TikTok. We open to find her smiling in the sun, in her classic 'anarchic teen' garb, mouthing the words of the song about a school girl who rejects one of her cohorts because of peer pressure. Naturally, she comes to regret it when the boy in question becomes a global rock sensation and she must watch the man who got away from the crowd.
The camera zooms into her trademark stripy tie, then zooms back out to reveal, not Avril, but Tony Hawk, the world's most famous skater, who shows off a few tricks before the short clip's end. It's the perfect, unexpected yet organic collaboration that gave a nod to Go Skateboarding Day. 'What in the 2003 is this?' one keen viewer exclaimed. 'This is the collab we all wanted in middle school.'
Give it a watch here:
Many Avril fans were as impressed with her age-defying appearance as they were with the video's content. 'Girl hasn't aged since 2000,' one wrote. Others repeated the sentiment: 'She looks the same!'
Scrutinising the appearance of women in the public eye is obviously not to be encouraged, but in this case it's wholly positive and celebratory of a woman who looks much the same as she did at the peak of her international fame, and seems to be doing what works for her. It really is pretty incredible that she looks the same now as she did when she became a major recording star in the early Noughties.
She really was a sensation. Her debut, Complicated, asserted her status as poster girl for a certain kind of angsty teen, while her album Let Go showcased a wide-ranging list of hits including I'm With You and, of course, Sk8er Boi. She continued to enjoy success throughout the Noughties with hits like Girlfriend and Nobody's Home, and clearly there's an enormous appetite for more: 2.7 million people have liked this new video.
Avril isn't the first famous person to take to TikTok to embrace the nostalgia of their early hits, though. Natasha Bedingfield, the British singer-songwriter responsible for bangers like These Words and Single, became a viral sensation when she used TikTok to showcase choreography that used her song Unwritten. And actress Alicia Silverstone said hello to the TikTok world by recreating one of the most memorable scenes from her star-making film Clueless, in which she wears a yellow tartan ensemble and yells 'As if!' as a male student attempts to embrace her on her way to school. In the new version, that young man is her son, and she turns to hug him affectionately just to show that she doesn't really mean it. Cute, right?
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