The Review: Avril Lavigne - Hello Kitty

Remember Avril Lavigne? She wrote some smash hits back in the early 2000s and managed to coin both being catchy as hell and at least a little edgy. It's easy to pretend that songs like Skater Boy and Girlfriend were far beneath you back in the day but if they got played today, a certain generation would be going crazy to them. She had a knack for a melody, was at least a tiny bit punkier than the rest of the mainstream pop establishment and could have happily lived off her hits, performing occasional gigs that early 2000s kids would still flock to in droves. So when I found out that she was on studio album number 5 (who knew!) and was releasing an Asian Market single entitled 'Hello Kitty,' I approached it with mild scepticism.

I needn't have bothered however since this particular single appears to be a selection of genres, beats and rainbow candy sugar blended in a lottery ball machine and spat out one distasteful lump at a time. Following the profound exclamation of 'Minasaiko Arigato', beats lifted from a poor cover 3OH!3's Star Struckk, she enters into a selection of cliches taken at random, including OMFG, unnecessary autotuned vox, spin the bottle and finally a drop that could be laughably called 'Dub-step' drop written on a single synth line.

The production behind it is confused, a mishmash of elements from the Bandcamp pop song sample pack 1. What I suppose is called the bridge reverts to stomping drums, more Japanese babble and then rises (alongside the bile that comes up with your throat) into a Meow, before the squeaky electronics return. If I had to pin it down, I'd call it Swagger Jagger, as mixed by DJ Blend through a series of filters designed to drain the soul from it!

As with any, errr... anthem, it culminates for a mercifully short time in both half step beats and her vocals before fading onto a processed kick. Those last 10 seconds of percussion are the best bit of the song. What has happened to the fun, the energy and don't give a damn attitude of the star who brought us some of last decades best pop hits. Pop can be cheesy, quirky and edgy but overly worked, underwritten tracks such as this are a blight on someone with a talent for so much more! Listen to the single here and let me know what you think!