Photo Gallery: Avril Lavigne • American Family Insurance Amphitheater • Milwaukee WI

Brassneck | September 11, 2024

Avril Lavigne
American Family Insurance Amphitheater Milwaukee, WI
September 9th, 2024

Recap and photos by Curt Baran

Avril Lavigne is giving the people what they want…all the hits!

Back in the early 2000s, the then 16-year-old Canadian unleashed her brand of pop-punk on her debut album, Let Go. She has since gone on to sell tens of millions of records worldwide.

So, as she’s about to enter her fourth decade on the planet, she’s embarked on the to-the-point “Greatest Hits” tour that found her behind the cheddar curtain at Milwaukee’s lakefront shed (American Family Insurance Amphitheater). And the “hits” is precisely what she delivered. Lavigne struck gold on her first two records when she took a punk attitude and aesthetic and married them to insanely catchy pop songs that were sterile enough for the parents of her teen audience but dressed in ample window dressing to make her teen audience believers.

So those former adolescents showed up in force, most now parents themselves (with a new generation in tow) to revel in the soundtrack of their youth. That meant radio staples like “Complicated,” “Boyfriend,” “Sk8er Boi,” “What The Hell,” and a cavalcade of others. Like so many empty calories, the adoring crowds in the packed house devoured every last bite, consuming the equivalent of an aural Value Meal as if they still possessed the metabolism of their wonder years