Avril Lavigne is a girl who knows what she wants. And when it came to writing her eagerly awaited third album, The Best Damn Thing, she had one very clear goal in mind: To make it fun. While touring in 2004 for her last album, Under My Skin, which sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, the Canadian-born punk-pop dynamo found that her favourite songs to play were the faster, more up-tempo song, so she resolved to make a record that captured the kind of high-spirited, full-throttle energy that she loved to unleash on-stage.

The Best Damn Thing is brimming with gutsy guitar riffs, instantaneously catchy sing-along party-starting choruses, power pop punk, and rebellious rock n roll attitude. It's a marked departure from the darker, more introspective tone of Under My Skin and on tracks such as the defiant, riotous, kiss-off-to-a-cheating-boyfriend Everything Back But You, Avril took pleasure in creating scenarios for her lyrics that weren't, as she says, "straight out of my diary". The result is a collection of songs that reveal just how far she's evolved as a songwriter and singer, from the sassy, empowering I Can Do Better (one of Avril's personal favourites) to the irrepressible first single Girlfriend which unexpectedly combines a hip-hop beat with beefy power chords, hand-claps, and a chanted girl-group-style chorus with a punk rock twist - to the emotional ballad Keep Holding On, which she wrote at the request of 20th Century Fox for the studios fantasy/adventure film Eragon.

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