Avril Lavigne says Machine Gun Kelly and Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker “brought their own flavour and skill” to her new album, ‘Love Sux’.
The 37-year-old musician has returned to her pop-punk roots on her follow-up to 2019’s ballad-heavy ‘Head Above Water’, which was released on Friday (25.02.22), and has explained how the LP “sounds sonically different with their chops on it.”
She told Vogue: “They brought their own flavour and skill. Having new people to work with is really inspiring.
“Machine Gun Kelly is a fantastic writer and he played guitar; Mark [Hoppus] played bass on his song; Travis plays drums on some of the songs. It really sounds sonically different with their chops on it, instead of just hiring a studio session player. I’ll work with producers and they’ll hire a guitar player, and I always have to sit with them and go through each track and make notes.
“But when John Feldmann played guitar, I was like, ‘you’re my favorite guitar player!’ Everyone understood me and what I was going for.”
The ‘Sk8er Boy’ hitmaker insisted she was “not in the mood” to write more ballads and just wanted to “rock”.
She said: “I started talking to Travis [Barker, who contributed to the album] in 2020, and then I worked on it all of last year. I decided to make a fun rock and roll record. I was just not in the mood to sing ballads or mid-tempos—I was like, let’s just rock. I worked with really cool fun people on the scene, like Machine Gun Kelly, Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker.”
Avril released ‘Love Sux’ on Travis’ record label, DTA.
It features the singles ‘Bite Me’ and the Blackbear-featuring track ‘Love It When You Hate Me’.
Mark is featured on ‘All I Wanted’ and MGK is on ‘Bois Lie’.
The ‘Love Sux’ tracklisting is as follows:
1. ‘Cannonball’
2. ‘Bois Lie’ (featuring Machine Gun Kelly)
3. ‘Bite Me’
4. ‘I Love It When You Hate Me’ (featuring blackbear)
5. ‘Love Sux’
6. ‘Kiss Me Like The World Is Ending’
7. ‘Avalanche’
8. ‘Déjà Vu’
9. ‘F.U’
10. ‘All I Wanted’ (featuring Mark Hoppus)
11. ‘Dare To Love Me’
12. ‘Break Of A Heartache’