Can 12,000 fans be wrong? Avril Lavigne brought her “Greatest Hits” tour to Alpharetta after touring Europe for months and a handful of dates in the U.S. with many to go. The tour “celebrates” her new Greatest Hits album and features… her greatest hits! Lavigne hasn’t properly toured Atlanta in 16 years, partially due to a setback with Lyme Disease in 2014. I’d been hearing her through my daughter’s lens back when she released her first album in 2002, and Lavigne’s alt-pop-punk approach sounding more imaginative than most pop songs at the time. She’s been releasing albums fairly steadily since, and, as Lavigne ordered the house lights up, she exclaimed “holy sh*t!” seeing the crowd packed to the far corners of the lawn.
From the start, the fans were into this. Cell phones rarely fell from sight for fans catching their moments, and otherwise arms reached for the sky with finger pointing and heart shapes. And the sing-alongs… not in unison, but fans here and there singing every word. There’s no doubt fans got just what they wanted.
Given the length of the tour to date, the chit chat and moving about were fairly perfunctory, but Avril said all the right things to engender an audience response. The most engaging were when she brought out openers Simple Plan to cover their song “Addicted” and girlfriend to cover Blink-182’s “All the Small Things.” Both of these bands exhibited, or were allowed, a lot more energy and engagement than Avril’s band, and the remainder of her set benefited from it. With T-shirts tossed to the audience, streamers shot into the air, large balloons, stage lighting gone berserk, fans invited on stage for selfies and autographed skateboards, and even Avril popping a bottle of bubbly and spraying those in the front, it became quite the party.
This carried on through the final set and encore, the last of which featured a quick change of clothing to a white dress for a fine encore. What? No tie? It is a greatest hits concert. “When You’re Gone” had a certain rock edge that was otherwise lacking, but Avril’s voice is in great shape, and she delivers what the fans wanted, their hands in the air until the end and almost all waiting for the end before heading to the exits.
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Simple Plan is a really, really good plan, or a dangerous gambit, to get a crowd excited for a headliner. Pierre Bouvier is a fantastic frontman, prone to jumping and encouraging the audience to do the same. The band played a fine set, with many attending singing along, particularly to covers of “Mr. Brightside” and “All Star.” There were all positives here, but the contrast of this band’s dynamic engagement compared with Avril’s team cemented in place would put all the pressure on her to fully engage the crowd.
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California pop-punk duo girlfriends, the name chosen before the two had made any music, opened the evening with a lot of energy to greet an arriving crowd. They’ve been together about four years, with “Jessica” and “California” catching attention early on.
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