Avril Lavigne – Sk8er Boi
Sk8er Boi is the second single from pop-rock star Avril Lavigne’s debut album Let Go. Written by Lavigne and The Matrix and released in 2002, Sk8er Boi reached number ten on the United States Billboard Hot 100. The song reached number eight in the U.K., thirteen in Canada, three in Australia, and number one in Spain.
Sk8er Boi was used in many different media outlets. It has been heard in the television show Cold Case. It also appears in the video games Elite Beat Agents and SingStar Pop. In 2003, the song was optioned for a movie by Paramount Pictures but has either been abandoned or is in development hell.
The song Sk8er Boi is about a preppy girl and a skater boy. The boy openly likes the girl but she refuses to tell him her true feelings, that she likes him back, because of peer pressure from her friends. Eventually he becomes a rock star and she sees him on television. She regrets not telling him her feelings while she had the chance. He is now dating someone else.
Some people trace the inspiration of the song to Marc Gould who Lavigne was dating at the time. Other people say that Sk8er Boi is Lavigne’s autobiography, with one small exception, she is the skater that liked a preppy boy.
The music video was directed by Francis Lawrence. The video starts with a man in an alley with a mound of spray paint on the ground. He is advertising for a concert that Lavigne is hosting. The video continues with advertising seen everywhere from computers and cell phones to coffee cups. There is even a star, the symbol of her concert, spray painted on the road. In the middle of the music video it shows Lavigne and her band setting up for a concert on top of cars. The concert begins and people start filling in around the cars. Eventually the police try to stop the concert. They start putting people into the police car and Lavigne finishes her concert by smashing her guitar into a windshield. The last shot of the video is of a helicopter flying over Lavigne and Lavigne looking up at it. FYI If you watch the music video closely you’ll see that Lavigne switches from blue to black pants with her green shirt halfway through the music video.
In the music video Lavigne is wearing a green and gold shirt from Wilkesboro Elementary in North Carolina. She picked the shirt up at a thrift store in New York. Orders poured in from all over the world for the T-shirt Lavigne had worn in the video. The shirts had been out of circulation for four years but were reprinted. The school earned enough money from the t-shirt sales to buy new computers.