He left Avril Lavigne to perform the ritual of the encores, ‘Head Above Water’ began to play, a souvenir from that Christian rock album that he released a few years ago and, as then, half of the audience had disappeared. Next stop, Amaral. Lavigne, princess (for a day) of early 2000s teenage punk pop, had already emptied her saddlebags and let loose ‘Sk8ter Boy’, So a good part of those attending the third day of Cruïlla gave up on the Canadian’s return. What else was there for?
It had been almost twenty years since she last performed in Barcelona, but in reality it was as if time had not passed for her. Literally: she came on stage in a miniskirt, fishnet stockings and the Tyrolean song of ‘Girlfriend’ Framed by pink hearts and shins and a pirate skull, suddenly it was 2007 at the Fòrum. On the screens, archive images, from the 2000s and beyond, of the artist who slipped in between Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, flipping the bird and pumping out oil, a complete refinery, of shopping centre and radio-friendly punk pop. Generous electricity, garish colours and the central stage of Cruïlla converted into an amusement park, a skating rink and a teenage confessional. All at once, all at the same time.
As he sings in ‘Here’s To Never Growin’ Up’, It was all regarding celebrating youth and bingeing on nostalgia; regarding being displayed like a museum piece preserved in amber and permanently stranded in the tragic and cataclysmic post-adolescence. Nothing changes, everything remains the same. Like Oasis, she also wants to live forever in her most celebrated and memorable incarnation, in the highs of ‘Losing Grip’ and the lows of ‘I’m With You’.
That’s why, in addition to somewhat reluctantly emptying the hit magazine, waxing Blink-182’s ‘All The Small Things’ and move just enough, both literally and metaphorically, to cover the ground between ‘Complicated’ and ‘Happy Ending’ and the more recent ‘Bit Me’ and ‘Love It When You Hate Me’, Lavigne decided to make the job of press photographers extremely difficult and sent them as far away as possible, a strategy that, at a festival where every attendee carries a state-of-the-art mobile phone in their pocket, is equivalent to facing a tsunami with a pocket umbrella.
Lavigne, during his performance ADRIÁN QUIROGA
Back on stage, there was confetti, plumes of steam and even flames, but there was a lack of commitment, not to mention enthusiasm. His voice is still holding up, yes, but for a good part of the night he seemed to be working on autopilot. Nothing to do, for example, with the overwhelming and energetic performance that Olivia Rodrigo, one of his most illustrious followers, gave one of his weeks ago. Or, without leaving the Fòrum, with the performance of Amaral who came on stage to do exactly the same thing but in a completely different way. That is: polish their catalogue of greatest hits and shower the audience with the crystalline melodies of ‘Sin ti no soy nada’, ‘Días de verano’ or ‘Toda la noche en la calle’, the first to be played. Another trip to the past, yes, but executed with courage and contagious vitality. It’s a question of attitude.
Hours before, Cruïlla had already attended the last performance in Barcelona of Rayden, immersed in his farewell tour, and had begun to stretch with The Kooks, a band that would have been (and in fact was) the wet dream of the Benicàssim Festival three decades ago: bright English pop, sing-along choruses and a singer in a suit but bare-chested and looking like he spent all of high school giving a hard time with Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’. Songs swinging between Brighton and California and the adhesive properties of ‘She Moves in Her Own Way’ or ‘Naïve’ taking care of the rest.
