In the fall of 2002, teen magazines were facing an existential crisis. The safe, bright, bubblegum pop world of boy bands and “not so innocent” pop girlies was fading away. Christina Aguilerawas now X-tina with black streaks and a “Dirrty” new attitude.Justin Timberlake, fresh from his breakup withBritney Spears, was suddenly a mature solo star. But the biggest shift? The rise of punk-rock with a pop twist. It took over TRL, the airwaves, and the pages of our magazines. Tattoos, heavy guitars, and bad girls were in. Particularly a 17-year-old Canadian with a penchant for tank tops with neckties, baggy pants, and heavy eyeliner. If memes were a thing in the early aughts,Avril Lavignewould have been the “IDGAF” poster child.
Her “anti-Britney” schtick made her an instant superstar. Her debut smash single, “Complicated,” spent 16 consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard Adult Top 40 chart. As CosmoGIRL!’s entertainment editor at the time, I was thrilled to book her for our “rising star” column, ready to give our readers an intimate look at the punk princess with the relatable lyrics. We knew we’d found the voice of a generation.
While Avril was one of the few breakout stars who actually went on to become a CosmoGIRL! cover girl, 24 years later, I still cannot hear any of her hit songs without cringing at the memory of the single most awkward, painful, and agonizingly difficult celebrity interview of my decades-long career.
Recently, while digging through my archives for my nostalgia Substack, The Teen Mag Time Machine, I unearthed the original, unedited audio transcript of that fateful phone interview. Listening back to it is even worse than I remembered. Had the “skater punk” rebel been giving me an edgy rock-and-roll attitude as part of her “shtick,” I might have been okay with it. Instead, I was talking to a bratty (and exhausted) teenager who clearly did not want to be there. Her act of defiance was giving me a series of exhausted, one-word replies followed by pointed yawns.
The One-Word Brick Wall
It’s an entertainment journalist’s job to pull out stories, color, and specifics. I could tell as soon as Avril got on the line that it would be tough to get her to warm up, but I deployed every trick in the playbook: follow-up questions, softball prompts, and shared high school experiences.
Avril threw up a brick wall at every turn.
I started by congratulating her on “Complicated” and asking if her success had sunk in yet. She replied: “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t get very overwhelmed by things for some reason. I seem to be taking everything okay. I mean, I like get excited but I’m not like ‘Oh My G-d’ and like I don’t freak out or anything.”
Honestly, I was ready to work with that. But it was downhill from there.
When I asked where she got the deep emotional insight for her hit lyrics at just 17, she answered: “Um… I don’t know, I just write whatever I go through.”
When I asked about her songwriting process with her guitar player, Evan, and what their latest collaboration was about, she offered: “Um… My life, and what it’s like right now.”
When I tried to dig into her rebellious streak, asking what kind of trouble got her grounded, she hit me with: “Um… I don’t know, I can’t really think of anything.”
I got her to admit that in school, “my teachers hated me . . . because I never did my work. I never paid attention in school.” So I naturally followed up by asking if she was writing lyrics instead. Her reply? “I do remember writing a couple of songs in class but not very many.”
I perked up later when she explained what was it was like figuring out who wanted to hang simply because she was famous.
“I usually can tell if it’s a real friend or not…I’m really good at reading people,” Avril revealed. I asked, “What’s something that people do that you know they’re not being sincere?” I could hear Avril’s eyes rolling back into her head as she answered: “I just can tell when they’re like fake and just say like, ‘Hi!’ and like whatever . . . I don’t know. I can totally tell.”
The absolute rock bottom of the 34-minute interview came when I asked her to explain how she lived the “creed” of being skater punk—the very subculture she was the poster child for.
Me:“What is skater punk?”
AVRIL:“I don’t know, like sometimes I’m just like I want to go punk, like a little f*er, and I used to skateboard and I love skateboarding.”
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The Ultimate Editorial Salvage Job
Looking at a transcript full of “I don’t know” and “whatever” is pure panic. Avril eventually admitted she had pulled an all-nighter the night before and was simply too tired to think. Even the lightning round was painful. She named Johnny Resnick of the Goo Goo Dolls as her inspiration; when I asked what she said when she met him, she said, “nothing.” Her good luck charm? A thumb ring gifted by a “famous person” she wouldn’t name. I guessed Steven Tyler, and though she replied with a stoic “no,” I secretly think I was right.
Finally, the interview equivalent of pulling teeth without anesthesia ended when Avril abruptly cut me off with: “I have to go, because I have another interview that I’m supposed to be doing right now.”
I know how difficult it is to be 17 and famous. I built a career interviewing many “Avrils” who were uncomfortable and unsure how to present themselves. I knew to be patient and give them grace. I expected Avril to lean into being the “anti-Britney,” but I didn’t have much to work with.
To make the piece come together, I had to channel my best Dr. Frankenstein and cobble together fractions of sentences and turn sleepy, disjointed mumblings into cohesive paragraphs that painted her as an insightful, fierce, “old soul.” Reading the final version that ran in the October 2002 issue of CosmoGIRL!, you would never guess she was anything but thoughtful and profound. We spun a teenager who was literally yawning into the phone into a commanding pop-rock savior.
The Teen Mag Aftermath
The funniest part of this disaster? I wasn’t the only one struggling. Not long after my interview ran, One Tree Hill star Hilarie Burton, then a VJ on MTV’s TRL, admitted to me in a separate interview that Avril was the absolute worst guest they had to deal with, finding her to be “very apathetic.” We actually printed Hilarie’s candid complaint!
Decades later, looking back at the stark contrast between the audio tape and the glossy pages of the magazine is a wild reminder of how the Y2K pop-culture sausage was really made. We did our best to make a budding star seem cool and likable, even when the reality on the other end of the line was a sleepy 17-year-old desperately wishing she could just hang up and take a nap.
Want to hear about Lauren’s Y2K adventures in teen magazines? Head over to The Teen Mag Time Machine, and check Parade.com next week for another excerpt!
This story was originally published by Parade on Jul 20, 2026, where it first appeared in the Celebs section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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