By Danielle Bettendorf, Living & Arts Editor
With pop culture fueling our desire to keep revisiting nostalgia (just look at the music video for “thank u, next”), it’s no wonder that whenever someone from the past makes a comeback, all listeners and critics are ready to compare what we know with what’s coming up.
That’s the same case for Avril Lavigne’s new song “Dumb Blonde.” Lavigne, who is most well-known for her mid-2000s pop punk hits like “Sk8er Boi” and “Girlfriend,” had a few hits in the early 2010s but never hit the same level of popularity again.
With Lavigne’s new album, “Head Above Water,” dropping on Feb. 15, “Dumb Blonde” is likely the last teaser we’ll get before her first album since 2013 is released.
Though Lavigne’s return to music is exciting, “Dumb Blonde” makes me want to skip her new work – even on a single featuring one of my favorite artists, Nicki Minaj.
As soon as the chorus opens the song, we’re hit with the intense chorus – but not in a good way. When Lavigne blares “I ain’t no dumb blonde/I ain’t no stupid Barbie doll/I got my game on/You gon’ watch me, watch me, watch me prove you wrong,” I don’t feel empowered: I feel like Lavigne is screeching her half-hearted attempt at feminism to remind me she’s still relevant in 2019. I’m a huge pop fan, so I’m not one to say that you can’t have a catchy song with bad lyrics, but the back to-back “I ain’t” lines don’t come off as anything but boot-stomping tropes that haven’t been seriously considered since the mid-2000s. There’s only so much you can tackle in a song, but if I wanted a guilty pleasure tune that namedrops the Mattel product, I’d check Aqua’s 1997 hit “Barbie Girl” long before Lavigne’s song.
Once Lavigne gets into the verses, she fares a little better. Her voice is lower than in the chorus and she sounds more easygoing, more reminiscent of what we’ve gotten from Lavigne in the past.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that “Dumb Blonde” doesn’t stick because she embraces her femininity – despite that, this is a change from the singer who made neckties and t-shirts the fashion staple of a decade. Lavigne sounds more natural on the verses because the choruses sound so forced in comparison.
The second half of each lyric in the pre-chorus seems to almost flit away as Lavigne shoots it at the singer – almost as though she’s trying to get through them as soon as possible. Combined with the horrifically jarring “Watch me, watch me, watch me prove you wrong” that sounds reminiscent of Lavigne’s lazy and toneless “Hello Kitty,” every part of the song that tries to send a message to the listener falls completely flat.
This is also exemplified in the generic “Stand up everybody/Get up, say it loud” from the chorus. While Lavigne is far from the only artist to utilize nonspecific rallies in a song about empowerment, it feels like it’s 10 years too late, rather than being nostalgic. This song might have worked in the 2000s, but today it feels dated compared to everything else on the radio.
10 years ago, I’m not sure if Minaj would have featured on the song, but her verse doesn’t make “Dumb Blonde” much better. Her flow is nothing fans haven’t heard before and the lyrics are far from great. A feature from Minaj is usually enough to get me to at least listen to her part on repeat, but unless you’re starving for new material, I’d pass on this.
When I heard that Lavigne was returning and even more, collaborating with one of my favorite artists, I was excited to see what she could bring to a game she’s been out of for a long time. While I can’t speak for the rest of her album, if “Dumb Blonde” is indicative of the rest of the tracks, I’d rather revisit her old stuff than check out the new.
