Sometimes I get so caught up in thinking about serious things that I forget to step back and have a little fun. So I’ve instituted Fish in a Barrel to help me keep my sanity. The feature is designed for me to pick a pathetically easy target and have some fun making fun of it. I know, it’s not high criticism to pick on the helpless likes of Uwe Bolle or Nickelback. But damn if it doesn’t feel good.
Despite the shout out they get in the description of this column up above, and despite the fact that they inspired my first column of this sort back in college, I’ve never yet abused the good musicians of Nickelback in one of these Fish in a Barrel columns. That’s partly because the appointed time has not yet come, but also partly because at this point Nickelback is the floppiest of fishes. Practically synonymous with lowest common denominator radio rock (or as my friend Dan calls it, “butt rock”), Nickelback is the punching bag of the zeitgeist, so it’s not quite as fun to wail on them as it could be.
A few years ago Nickelback front man Chad Kroeger got engaged to fellow Canadian (and fellow terrible musician) Avril Lavigne, she of the suitless ties.
And whatever this is. (Photo by Keraunoscopia)
This has made soothsayers the world over understandably nervous as they prep for an Omen type scenario involving the Kroeger/Lavigne offspring terrorizing major cities with the threat of releasing the world’s most insipid single. Once upon a time she was a sk8erboi, but Avril Lavigne has long since traded in her bad girl image for… well, whatever she’s going for here.
An important transition step in this metamorphosis is her limpid 2004 single “My Happy Ending”, which borrows from the Hoobastank School of Songwriting to create a ballad so insipid it makes American tea look like single malt.
It seems that with “My Happy Ending” Lavigne was attempting to transition from the teen angst of songs like “Complicated” to the young-adult angst of female singer-songwriters like Natalie Imbruglia. But while that singer’s classic hit “Torn” creates a raw immediacy, “My Happy Ending” detaches itself from pain by wallowing in the vague. The first few lines make it clear there’s trouble ahead:
Let’s talk this over
It’s not like we’re dead
Was it something I did?
Was it something you said?
Here Lavigne attempts the classic “rhetorical question” gambit, trying to reach out to her former paramour through pointed soul searching. But has the rhetorical question gambit ever actually worked? Instead of lending urgency it just pushes the song out into the ocean of indecipherable regret. Maybe if I had just remembered soy sauce that one time, or if you hadn’t said those insulting things about Kevin Kline, we’d still be together today.
Things hardly get better in the chorus, when Lavigne bemoans that:
You were everything, everything
That I wanted
We were meant to be, supposed to be
But we lost it
All of our memories so close to me
Just fade away
All this time you were pretending
So much for my happy ending
Leave aside the asinine repetition of words and phrases for a moment and focus in on the arrested development of Avril’s emotional processing. I get it, the song’s called “My Happy Ending” and is meant to evoke thoughts of fairy tales and princes. Here’s the thing, though: fairy tales are not actually simplistic – we’ve just made them that way by filtering them through a treacly lens. And the sap present here is palpable in the hyperbolic approach Lavigne takes to love. Her lover was eveything she wanted, but now that betrayal has occurred, it’s imperative that she believe that he was fooling her the whole time.
Look, I’ve been a jerk to a lot of women in my life, that I won’t deny, but in the moment I’ve always been invested in my relationships. I grant you that there are men who make a living, romantically speaking, off of tricking women, but I’d like to think the Dennis Reynolds of the world are the exception, not the rule. (Warning: The following video clip is very, very NSFW).
The song’s coup de grace, however, comes at the beginning of the second verse, where Avril unleashes this Pulitzer-resume-filler of a line:
You’ve got your dumb friends
I know what they say
They tell you I’m difficult
But so are they
But they don’t know me
Do they even know you?
All the things you hide from me
All the shit that you do?
Whoa there killer – TWO rebuttals of your ex-flame’s “dumb friends” in one verse? Not only are they difficult, but they are unknowing? Reminds me of the Athenians in the age of Socrates. In fact, it’s too bad the old sage didn’t have access to Avril’s searching lyrics as he walked out of the courtroom under penalty of death; he could have served up some choice lines instead of that whole “We go our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows” garbage.
This masterful writing is paired with another excursion into vagueland, with the tantalizing question of what shit exactly her lover hides from her. Is he involved in dealing heroin to little kids? Overthrowing a legally elected socialist leader in a South American state for the CIA? Or is he a real monster, the kind that throws cups away when they still have liquid in them? (Seriously folks, don’t do it – it makes the life of your local custodial worker that much more aggravating).
Thank goodness Avril has, in recent times, found the equilibrium and joy she so desperately thought. Let’s all hope Chad Kroeger turns out to be the soggy lump of Prince Charming she’s always longed for, and that they truly are meant to be – supposed to be. If not – God help us all – we may have another “My Happy Ending” on our hands.
