Avril Lavigne released her new album, Love Sux, last Friday, 25th February. It’s Lavigne’s first album since signing with Travis Barker’s DTA Records and it’s a star-studded affair.
Barker co-produces and plays drums on eight of the album’s 12 tracks, including the lead single, ‘Bite Me’. EDM artist Marshmello gets a co-writing credit on ‘Bite Me’. The album’s other primary producers are Goldfinger’s John Feldmann, who’s produced records by Dune Rats, Blink 182 and Good Charlotte, and Mod Sun, who collaborated with Lavigne on the 2020 single, ‘Flames’.
Barker’s good pal Machine Gun Kelly adds guest vocals to the album’s second track, ‘Bois Lie’. Kelly co-wrote the track with Lavigne, Feldmann and Mod Sun. Emo rapper blackbear features on the album’s second single, ‘Love It When You Hate Me’.
The voice of Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus features prominently on the late album cut, ‘All I Wanted’, which is utter ’00s pop-punk revivalism. Another big pop-punk moment is ‘F.U.’, the only Love Sux track produced by Barker alone, and co-written by Machine Gun Kelly collaborator, Nick Long.
Avril celebrated the album’s release with a big party at The Roxy in Los Angeles, hosted by SiriusXM and Pandora. The event included a live performance where Lavigne played ‘Bite Me’ and ‘Love It When You Hate Me’ with Barker, ‘Bois Lie’ with Kelly and ‘Flames’ with Mod Sun, as well as the previous hits, ‘Sk8er Boi’, ‘Complicated’ and ‘Girlfriend’.
Check out fan footage of ‘Flames’ below.
