When Avril Lavigne announced her first tour in 10 years, the internet went wild – especially those who eagerly waited to buy tickets for her upcoming Winnipeg show on May 17 at the Canada Life Centre.

The new tour is set to start right after the release of her newest album, Love Sux, which will be available as of Feb. 25 and can be pre-saved on Spotify and Apple Music or pre-ordered on CD and cassette from her website.

Some longtime fans gushed over how excited they were to finally see her, since they didn’t get the chance to when they were younger. Others posted that the tour brought them a sense of nostalgia, reminiscing on simpler days that didn’t involve a pandemic.

“Nostalgia feels too tame a word to summarize how utterly excited I am for this tour,” Cassandra Wilson, a student at Brandon University, says. “Momentous feels closer but still not as dramatic as I’d like. This full-circle experience is fate.”

Wilson saw Lavigne live with a friend when she was 12 and living in Portage la Prairie.

“The tickets were the cheapest nosebleeds my wondrous mother could afford, but I enjoyed the experience as much as I would have (in the) front row,” Wilson says of that concert. “We made a huge sign, but we were so entranced the entire show, so we never even held it up.”

Wilson says the biggest difference between the show she saw when she was 12 and the upcoming concert will be the number of cellphones capturing video of the performances.

Another difference will be that this concert will happen during the current COVID-19 pandemic and may be postponed if another wave of the virus causes future lockdowns.

“I think we’re all scared of life having to be put on hold again. We’ve all missed out on so many life opportunities and experiences these last two years, and I’m keeping everything crossed for this concert to happen,” Kelsey Carriere, who has been a fan of Lavigne since she was six, says.

Some people online talked about listening to her music when they were very young, which could be seen as controversial, since Avril’s early 2000’s albums had a number of songs listed as “explicit.”

“I’m surprised my parents let me listen to her music at such a young age, but I used to perform concerts to her songs in my bedroom all the time as a kid,” Carriere says. “I’ve definitely been listening to her music more often recently, and with her new album coming soon, I feel like that six-yearold kid in my bedroom again.”

Carriere says she’s worried the concert will be postponed. Still, she’s excited to attend if and when it happens.

“Her music will never not make you want to get up and dance or crank the music and headbang in your car. There isn’t one specific thing to love. She’s such an icon for my generation for so many reasons,” Carriere says. “I’m probably most excited to hear ‘The Best Damn Thing,’ though. I’m so ready to dance my heart out on the floor screaming her lyrics right back at her.”

Published in Volume 76, Number 16 of The Uniter (February 3, 2022)