Friday, September 7, 2007

Avril Lavigne

Avril Ramona Lavigne-Whibley (born September 27, 1984) is a Canadian rock singer and musician. She has sold over twenty-six million albums worldwide.[citation needed] In 2006, Canadian Business Magazine ranked her the seventh most powerful Canadian in Hollywood.

Although her parents are of French origins, she doesn't speak French . Avril in French is"April", while la vigne means "the vine" or "the vineyard".

Lavigne's debut album, Let Go, was released in 2002. Her second and third albums, Under My Skin (2004) and The Best Damn Thing (2007), respectively, reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200. Lavigne has scored three number one songs worldwide to date and a total of nine top ten hits, including "Complicated", "Skater Boy", "I'm with You", "My Happy Ending", "Nobody's Home", "Keep Holding On", and "Girlfriend".

Avril Lavigne was born in Belleville, Ontario, in Canada, to a French-born father, John, and a Franco-Ontarian mother, Judy. Both parents are Catholic and she had a Catholic upbringing. Avril's musical talent was first spotted at the age of two when her mother says Avril began singing along with her on church songs. The family moved to Napanee, Ontario, when Lavigne was five years old.
In 1998, Lavigne won a competition to sing with fellow Canadian singer
Shania Twain on her first major concert tour. She appeared alongside Twain at her concert in Ottawa, appearing on stage to sing "What Made You Say That".
She was discovered by her first professional manager,
Cliff Fabri, while singing country covers at a Chapters bookstore in Kingston, Ontario. During a performance with the Lennox Community Theatre, Lavigne was spotted by local folk singer Steve Medd (a relation of the influential Canadian journalist, Ben Medd), who invited her to sing on his song "Touch the Sky" for his 1999 album Quinte Spirit. She also sang on "Temple of Life" and "Two Rivers" for his follow up album, My Window to You, in 2000.
At the age of sixteen she was signed by Ken Krongard, the
artists-and-repertoire (A&R) representative of Arista Records, who invited the head of Arista, Antonio "L.A." Reid, to hear her sing at the New York City studio of producer Peter Zizzo. She then completed work on her first album.

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