Avril Lavigne recently shared the details of her upcoming album Love Sux, which includes some pretty impressive features. During a recent visit to Mark Hoppus' radio show, she gushed over his contributions to the song "All I Wanted" and revealed that he's one of her "favorite artists."

"I was really excited to work with you. To be honest, you're one of my favorite artists," she divulged. "Dude Ranch and Enema Of The State, those were the records I was listening to in high school and as a teenager and I feel like they were really impactful on me as I was coming into my own musical identity."

"So when I had the opportunity to work with you, which was over Zoom, which was different, I was so excited and I was really impressed with how efficient you are in the studio," Lavigne continued. "You write, you record yourself, you can engineer, you sing, you're playing. So having you on the album is a huge honor for me. So I'm really excited about our collaboration."

Elsewhere in the interview, the pop punk queen explained what fans can expect sonically from her new collection of songs. "I feel this is my most alternative record sonically," she said. "There was a period where it was, on my first album, it was like, 'Okay, I want to rock out. I want guitars. I want to sound like a band. I want drums.' At the time, it was bubblegum music. Super pop music was in so I had to fight for that. But then a few albums in, people were like, 'Radio just don't play songs with guitars and live drums.' I had to evolve, but things had to dial back a bit. Not that I wanted to do that, but I did. And so, with this album, I just wanted to not hold back at all and just guitars, drums, just go for it."

"And lyrically, it’s funny. The album is called Love Sux and I went into that feeling that way genuinely," Lavigne added. "I still do. But it was a chance for me to reflect on my past relationships and my past experiences in love and the ups and downs that I’ve been through. I still experience that, and in the pandemic and having so much time to do songwriting it gave me the opportunity to go there and it felt good."

Love Sux is slated for a February 25 release.

Toby Knapp

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