Avril Lavigne’s Top 10 Songs

For nearly 25 years, Avril Lavigne has been the undisputed princess of pop-punk. From early smashes like “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” to recent favorites like “Bite Me” and “Love It When You Hate Me,” the Ontario, Canada native has been at the forefront of the genre through each of its waves — from its explosion at the dawn of the millennium to the recent resurgence in the 2020s.

This spring, Lavigne will hit the road once again for the second leg of Avril Lavigne: The Greatest Hits Tour, which initially kicked off in May 2024 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The upcoming run of dates for Lavigne’s ongoing greatest hits tour will start May 18, making stops in New York City, Niagara Falls, Raleigh, Tampa and more through the end of June. This time around, she’ll be joined by special guests Simple Plan, Fefe Dobson and We The Kings on select dates.

Below, dive into our picks for the 10 best songs in Lavigne’s discography, and scroll to the end for a playlist of all 10 tracks. You can also play along and share your own ranking on TikTok using our Avril Lavigne effect.

10. “What the Hell”

While her 2011 album Goodbye Lullaby was a more stripped-back affair than its trio of predecessors, Lavigne still kept things delightfully bratty as she embraced her inner bad girl on lead single “What the Hell.”

“Love hurts whether it’s right or wrong/ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah/ I can’t stop ‘cause I’m having too much fun,” she declares while gleefully toying with a scruffy, tattooed love interest who happens to bear at least a nominal resemblance to Brody Jenner (her longtime boyfriend at the time) in the music video. In between taking a stolen taxi cab for a joyride, flirting with a court full of basketball players or crowdsurfing into the final chorus, Lavigne proved that, nearly a decade into her career, she wasn’t letting her foot off the gas one bit.

9. “All I Wanted” feat. Mark Hoppus

Turns out joining forces with a pair of fellow pop-punk legends is still a surefire way to deliver an earworm in the 2020s. The singer’s 2022 album Love Sux was an unabashed return to her roots, filled with bright pop-punk bangers like lead-off “Bite Me” and punchy collabs with next-gen stars like Machine Gun Kelly (“Bois Lie”) and blackbear (“Love It When You Hate Me”).

The entire set was executive produced by none other than Travis Barker, who added his inimitable imprint by drumming on the bulk of the new songs. For propulsive album cut “All I Wanted,” Barker’s blink-182 bandmate Mark Hoppus joined the party, trading verses with Lavigne over propulsive verses that charge into the chorus like a runway train.

8. “Hot”

Many of Lavigne’s biggest hits lead with equal doses of snarky attitude, a tough facade and a devilish grin, but the third single off The Best Damn Thing (2007) finds the eight-time Grammy nominee reveling in pure infatuation with a new flame that makes her feel appropriately appreciated, cherished and, well, hot.

The singer may rattle off all of her lover’s best qualities in the opening stanza, but by the second verse, she makes it clear she’s still in control of the relationship, singing: “I can make you feel all better, just take it in/ And I can show you all the places you’ve never been/ And I can make you say everything that you’ve never said.” By the time Lavigne lets a soaring descant rip above the melody in the song’s final chorus, it’s clear love looks — and sounds — great on pop-punk’s reigning princess.

7. “Don’t Tell Me”

Lavigne kicked off her sophomore album, 2004’s Under My Skin, with lead single “Don’t Tell Me,” a scathing takedown of entitled misogynists pressuring girls into sex. The Butch Walker-produced track also gave the singer’s fans a taste of the darker, more grunge-driven sound of the LP as she snarls, “Did you think that I was gonna give it up to you this time?/ Did you think that it was somethin’ I was gonna do and cry?/ Don’t try to tell me what to do/ Don’t try to tell me what to say/ You’re better off that way/ I’m better off alone anyway.”

Reflecting on the inspiration behind the song a few years after its release, Lavigne told MTV, “I was just thinking about what it was like being a girl, and I was seventeen when I wrote that song, so that was all fresh on my mind… there’s a lot of pressure for girls these days, and I’m happy to have that song, to be able to sing it up on stage every night, and to introduce it by telling the audience that this song is all about being strong and [it] goes out to all the girls.”

6. “Rock N Roll”

By the time she released Avril Lavigne in 2013, the singer had graduated from mother-f—king princess to elder statesman of the genre she helped establish. But even years before pop-punk’s resurgence in the early 2020s, Lavigne was still dedicated to rocking out and letting people know it.

Her famously bad attitude is something to be celebrated as she brazenly declares, “I don’t care if I’m a misfit/ I like it better than the hipster bullshit” over hand claps and power chords on the deliriously fun singalong. Later on in the chorus, the pop-punk princess invites her fans to join in the rock revelry, wailing, “What if you and I/ Just put up a middle finger to the sky?/ Let ‘em know that we’re still rock n’ roll!”

5. “Tell Me It’s Over”

Lavigne’s sixth album, Head Above Water (2019), was anchored by its passionate title track — a rousing, inspirational ballad the singer penned in the midst of a life-altering battle with Lyme disease. However, second single “Tell Me It’s Over” cracks the top five of this list for not only being something of a hidden gem in Lavigne’s discography, but arguably the best vocal performance of her career.

The ballad starts out as a dreamy waltz straight from an earlier era before crescendoing into a broken hearted weeper as the singer laments the “circular motions” of an off-and-on love affair she just can’t quit. “Tell me it’s over/ If it’s really over/ ‘Cause it don’t feel like it’s over whenever you’re closing the door,” she begs, backed by a doo-wop choir and the orchestral swell of piano and horns. Lavigne may be desperate to break things off, but fans could listen to her voice soar on this underappreciated deep cut time and time again.

4. “My Happy Ending”

Don’t let its rosy title fool you: the second single off Lavigne’s sophomore album comes without any semblance of a happily ever after. As the full-length’s second single, “My Happy Ending” followed “Don’t Tell Me” in the rollout. But rather than a statement of feminist defiance, the post-grunge anthem wallows in pitch-black anger, disappointment and callous betrayal as the singer nurses a shattered heart.

“You were everything, everything that I wanted/ We were meant to be, supposed to be/ But we lost it/ All of the memories, so close to me, just fade away/ All this time you were pretendin’/ So much for my happy ending,” Lavigne snarls on the hook. However, maybe the teen phenom’s hard-rocking heartbreak did work out for the best: in the end, “My Happy Ending” became the album’s defining single as well as her fourth top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.

3. “Sk8er Boi”

We all know how this story goes, but in case you don’t, here’s a quick refresher: “He was a boy, she was a girl. Can we make it any more obvious?” To follow up her smash debut “Complicated,” Lavigne wove a millennial love story worthy of Romeo and Juliet — except this time the star-crossed romance was between the titular “Sk8er Boi” and the uptight ballerina who secretly loved him

Unfortunately, the tiny dancer let classism and peer pressure get in the way of true love — a choice she would surely regret when, decades later, her lost love turned up “rockin up MTV.” The final twist in the story comes during the bridge, as Lavigne turns the narrative around to reveal that she ended up with the “Sk8er Boi” after the ballet dancer said, “See ya later, boy.” If there’s a lesson to be learned, it comes from Avril herself: “Sorry girl, but you missed out!” Thank goodness the ballerina’s loss is everyone else’s gain, though, because we got a hell of a good song out of it.

2. “Complicated”

In the spring of 2002, a 16-year-old Lavigne burst onto the scene with a simple question: “Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?” The pop-rock ode to authenticity introduced the then-unknown Canadian teen sensation as a poignant singer-songwriter committed to unflinching lyrical honesty underneath the scene-y aesthetic (white tank, baggy cargo pants, smeared eyeliner, and the now-classic accessory of tie-as-a-necklace).

With its melodic verses, philosophical chorus and contemplative tone, “Complicated” appealed to tweens, teens and adults alike, and ultimately landed the newcomer in the upper echelon of the Hot 100 by peaking at No. 2 and spending a then-record-breaking 16 weeks atop the Adult Pop Airplay chart. In fact, the anthem became so ubiquitous that it was nominated for Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance the following year at the Grammys, and remains a beloved touchstone of the post-9/11 musical landscape that instantly takes any fan back to the early 2000s.

1. “Girlfriend”

“Hey, hey! You, you!” With its irresistibly catchy chorus and stomp-and-clap beat, Lavigne came out swinging when she dropped “Girlfriend,” the lead single for her third album, The Best Damn Thing, in 2007. Long gone were the brooding, melodramatic guitars of the Under My Skin era, replaced by pink streaks in the singer’s hair, punchy pop production and sweet and sour lyrical sass on lines like, “Don’t pretend, I think you know I’m damn precious/ And hell yeah, I’m the motherf–kin’ princess/ I can tell you like me too, and you know I’m right.”

Outdoing her previous high water mark with “Complicated,” Lavigne’s feisty boyfriend-stealing banger became her first, and so far only, song to hit the top spot on the Hot 100. The song’s deliciously cocky music video broke records by becoming the first upload in YouTube history to reach 100 million views. You know it’s not a secret, but in case you need more proof “Girlfriend” reigns supreme as the best song in Avril’s discography, press play on the official remix, which ratchets up the fun with a guest turn from ‘00s icon Lil Mama.

Tickets and VIP Packages for Avril Lavigne: The Greatest Hits Tour are available now on Ticketmaster.