New on Newsstands: Avril Lavigne

I interviewed Avril Lavigne, the pop star renowned for wearing more black eyeliner than Cleopatra, for the current issue of American Way, the in-flight magazine of American Airlines. You can read it here.

I was surprised to discover that she's a very shy person. You wouldn't that from her public persona—a rebellious, small-town sk8ter girl who wears ties over wife beaters. (Avril has a girly side, too: She
has two rooms full of Hello Kitty collectibles in her house, including a pink Hello Kitty couch and paintings.) She's no push over, mind. Lavigne famously rejected her record label’s attempts to turn her into the next Britney Spears. “I told them, ‘I have to write my own songs,’” recalls Lavigne. “I was able to tap into who I am and what I wanted my sound to be, which was different from anything on the radio at the time, which was Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, Britney Spears – very bubblegum pop.  I was a chick with a guitar and it was so different from anything out there.”