Avril Lavigne Tomorrow

I thought I'd write a bit about the name of the blog. I just received an email from her mailing list (which I don't even remember putting myself on) about her new perfume and thought maybe I should perhaps explain the apparent disparity between the name and what I generally post about.
Looked back at what I had to say about the name when I started the blog:

To call this by her name is not intended to in some way make a case for her as a poet, as a certain trend would seem to encourage. Far from it. The idea of placing a pop/rock artist into the category of the poet seems to be a way of deradicalising pop/rock music. By lazily reaching for the canon of poetry to contain pop music we are ignoring it. It is not a way of removing distinctions between high and low culture but an attempt to reinforce it by including things, swallowing things, smothering things that could be dangerous to the system that perpetuates the canon. The naming as poet distracts our attention away from what is said to how it is said.

Is this too idealistic? Am I suggesting a certain radicalness inherent to pop music? Yes and no. Yes, perhaps I am being too idealistic, clinging to a 60's dream that pop music can change anything. Although what is culture if it does not influence the society from which it comes? I am simply opposed to a notion of culture that would place wholly within the museum. But no, I do not believe that there is some radical presence within pop music. I believe that pop music is what it is, or more precisely, pop music must become what it could be. It is an attempt to (re)radicalise pop music, by thinking of it in different terms to the ones offered by the mainstream.

It is this attempt which we place under the name Avril Lavigne. On her first two albums there is a struggle with this notion. They both contain and question traditional notions of what pop music is. On the albums Avril is between the two versions, jumping neither one way or the other, but she is not just sat on the fence, she is questioning both sides, asking where she should fall (and possibly on her third album falling the wrong way).

And that still holds, so to continue the name is to keep the faith. I am still a fan of Avril Lavigne. There's no irony about it, no notion of kitsch at work. K-punk wrote something on fandom while I was thinking about this post:

Far from being uncritical dupes, fans will often be more critical of their object of adoration than anyone else is; in part, evidently, because they care far more than those who haven't made the libidinal investment. (This doesn't mean that fans won't close ranks when their object is attacked by an outsider.) I say 'object of adoration' but 'adoration' doesn't really capture the fan's relation to the object. The object isn't so much adored as fetishised, elevated into the position of an idol, the figure around and through which libido is organised. But the mistake of anglo-American deflationism is its notion that we can simply dispense with this kind of fetishism and just deal with propositions. Some kind of attitudinal/ libidinal stake is always necessary to get things going; the issue is whether it is foregrounded and affirmed or occulted and denied. Passing beyond being a fan is not achieved by occupying a chimeric position of libidinal neutrality, but precisely by following the implications of the libidinal investment.

What's interesting is the point at which a fan's criticism crosses over and becomes a betrayal. Often, though, betrayal is not a consequence of critical dissatisfaction, but of fidelity.

And that is the point. The name is about fidelity, keeping true to an original idea of Avril Lavigne, the "questioning of selling out", the wavering between two poles of art and advert - and the tomorrow indicating the possibility of moving ahead, breaking out of the inertia. My fidelity sees what is essential at the heart of Avril's music - even if that music was yesterday, it can still be used as a guide for tomorrow.
I was going to write more, but I don't want this to turn into some huge defence of the name where none is necessary. It's just a clarification of my position.