Losing Grip is a fucking hardcore song from a bizarre album. Let Go is a really strange. It’s almost a fifty fifty split between a kind of nu metal Alanis Morissette and filler strummy guitar crap with Sk8er Boi as a novelty outlier.

It’s hard to place Losing Grip. It’s probably supposed to be an Incubus song with some Canadian warbling. The pre chorus is one of my favourite examples of creating momentum using vocals. The first three lines build intensity before the last line shifts into the heavy chorus.

“I was left to cry there
Waitin’ outside there
Grinning with a lost stare
That’s when I decided”

I wonder about what the real response to Avril Lavigne was at the time. I’m sure if Reddit had been the way it is now there would have been plenty of toxic commentary on this album because it flirts with being rockier but reigns it in with some lighter forgettable pop stuff. And I wonder if people at the label had a big influence on it, because the end result is a bit all over the place, trying to tick boxes without alienating anyone too much.

Listen to Losing Grip by Avril Lavigne here.