Avril Lavigne: 'When You're Gone'

When Avril Lavigne is good, she's the perfect punky popstrel with an endearingly brattish sneer and a whole lotta attitude. But when she's bad, she still seems like Alanis Morissette's irksome, slightly desperate younger sister. Sadly, 'When You're Gone', the second single from her current LP The Best Damn Thing, is an example of the latter.

Over bombastic drums and some utterly characterless guitar riffs, Avril screeches about, y’know, how, like, tough it is when, ohmigod, your boyfriend, like, goes away for a while. Our advice? Calm down, love: he’s probably gone to the Fall Out Boy gig and will be back by midnight. This tune's as stodgy and unappealing as a bowl of your grandmother's rice pudding. We'll keep 'Girlfriend' on repeat for a little while longer, thank you very much.