Avril is currently busy with many things (I can’t keep up with her). Her musical creativity is her greatest gift, and when she reaches down deep she can make powerful songs that seem simple but resonate profoundly thanks to her uniquely versatile and evocative voice. No one in the world sings like her. Two decades ago, she sang with real-life candor about being a teenage girl—about liking boys, of course, but also about the whole spectrum of enthusiasm for life, wondering about the future, dreams, awkwardness, loneliness, searching for human connection, and the discovery of existence as an awesome adventure that is “anything but ordinary.”
“Dear Avril, there are still songs not yet written that no one but you can sing. Give your great voice to those songs that express the whole range of struggles and joys and questions of your life today. Don’t give in to cynicism, but find the wonder and fascination and urgency of what life offers you now. Ask that question, ‘is it enough?’, and then sing your heart out. You can sing these songs like nobody else. And not just power ballads (of which you already have some of the best ever); go ahead and rock ‘n roll it — make some “noise,” not just in anger, not for vengeance, but with the energy and enthusiasm that will help the rest of us to wake up. Your voice has a strength and a clarity and a quality that shapes words so that they stick in our heads.
“Wishing you many more happy birthdays…”
