Before she was punk’s princess, Avril Lavigne was a church kid. Yes, that Avril.
Born in Belleville, Ontario, in 1984, Lavigne grew up in a Pentecostal home where the bass lines were played by her dad and Sunday mornings were nonnegotiable. “Jesus Loves Me” was one of the first songs she ever sang — at age 2, from the backseat of the family car after church.
“My mom said when I was 2, I came back from church singing ‘Jesus Loves Me,’ and she said that she knew I was going to be a singer then,” Lavigne said in a 2011 interview. “She called me her little songbird.”
Her family attended Third Day Worship Centre in Kingston, where Lavigne’s early musical life started not in smoky clubs, but in church pews and youth theater. By age 10, she was performing solos like “Near the Heart of God” at Sunday services. She also took part in faith-forward productions like “Godspell” and “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” blending her creative streak with a foundation in church community.
By the time she was a teenager, her voice was catching the attention of local judges. She entered singing competitions across Ontario — performing country-pop and gospel-inspired ballads that won her radio contests and led to her first big break: a duet with Shania Twain at just 14 years old.
But things moved fast from there. A few short years later, Lavigne traded in gospel ballads for chunky guitar riffs, angsty hooks and a record deal. Her 2002 debut album, Let Go, launched her into instant pop stardom, making her one of the youngest female solo artists to hit No. 1 in the UK. “Complicated,” “Sk8er Boi” and “I’m With You” became generational anthems. And for a while, the church-kid chapter got buried under layers of punk-pop bravado.
Still, it was never fully erased.
In interviews, Lavigne would nod to her spiritual upbringing influencing her career.
“Singing in church as a child made me very happy,” she told USA Today in 2019. “That’s where I got my start and how it all began.”
That connection resurfaced during a very different chapter in her life. In the late 2010s, Lavigne disappeared from the spotlight while privately battling Lyme disease. She later revealed that the yearslong illness left her bedridden and fearing for her life. It was during that time that she returned to songwriting — specifically, to a song that became one of the most overtly spiritual of her career.
“I had accepted that I was dying … and then I prayed to God for help,” she told Billboard in 2018. “I wrote ‘Head Above Water’ from that place.”
Released as the lead single from her 2019 comeback album, “Head Above Water” is a pop-rock prayer. The lyrics open with desperation — “I’ve gotta keep the calm before the storm” — and build into a direct plea: “God, keep my head above water / Don’t let me drown, it gets harder.”
The song reached No. 5 on Billboard’s Christian Songs chart and was embraced on Christian radio. Lavigne described writing it as “a very spiritual experience.” The music video included a dove — often used to represent the Holy Spirit — floating across a dramatic oceanside landscape.
At the time, she told Billboard that the album marked a return to her earliest influences. “I’m going back to my roots a little bit,” she said. “I got my start in church and at country fairs when I was a young child, and I think those earlier influences are definitely coming out now.”
Still, she made it clear she wasn’t rebranding.
“I’m not a crazy Bible-thumper,” she told USA Today. “But I do have faith.”
She called it a personal relationship with God, not a platform.
That nuance became especially relevant when her next single, “I Fell in Love With the Devil,” sparked backlash. Fans accused her of blasphemy. But Lavigne responded quickly, clarifying that the song was metaphorical — not anti-faith.
“I wrote ‘I Fell in Love With the Devil’ as a constant reminder to myself that some of the darkest people in this world can be disguised as angels,” she wrote on Instagram. “Please allow my song to be your reminder to not let someone else’s demons take you down.”
Following the controversy, Lavigne stepped back from talking about her faith publicly and stuck closer to her pop-punk sound. But we’re still hoping there’s a worship album in the vault somewhere.
