- Words Notion Staff
Pop-punk hero Avril Lavigne is ready to dial up the nostalgia as she teases a film adaptation of her hit song "Sk8er Boi" on its 20th anniversary.
The Internet is typically full to bursting with reminders of how old we are all getting, but here’s a special one for you: as we head into 2022, Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” is about to turn 20.
Don’t worry too much about that reminder of your own mortality, though – nostalgia is forever, and “Sk8er Boi” looks set for a surprising comeback. Lavigne is still producing new music on the regular, with her seventh album coming in a matter of months, and it’s set to be a big return to the quintessentially early-2000s pop-punk sound that made her famous. Apparently, she’s taking that opportunity to look back on one of her greatest hits. And, if we take her word for it, make it into a movie.
Chatting on the podcast She Is The Voice on I Heart Radio, Lavigne reflected on the song’s high school themes:
You know what it was like in high school, you have all the different groups and cliques, and there’s like skaters, preps and jocks. It’s kind of like a missed opportunity at love.
Lavigne then elaborated on how the appeal of “Sk8er Boi” endures, and just what she might do about all that nostalgia:
With it being almost the 20th anniversary, a lot of people have been asking me to play this song on TV shows, so it keeps getting brought back up and people will always reference it to me. And so, I’m actually going to turn this song into a film and take it to the next level.
She didn’t elaborate further on the potential film’s development, but hey, we think there’s potential there. If you didn’t pay too much attention to the lyrics and instead concentrated on the glorious early-2000sness of the music video (no judgement here), rest assured that there is a proper story in “Sk8er Boi”. It’s a timeless story of teenage love across two different worlds, and the snobby attitude towards skater boys that leads to Lavigne’s protagonist losing out on the prime opportunity to date a mid-2000s MTV guitar hero (tragic). Speaking as someone who sat through He’s All That on Netflix this year, teen movies have been made from a lot less.
Plus, Lavigne’s revival comes at the ideal time. Thanks to Olivia Rodrigo, teenage girl pop punk is cool again – while Rodrigo’s music is yet to reference skateboarding, the lineage from Lavigne’s work is right there.
Hollywood is a fickle place, but like we said, nostalgia is powerful, and “Sk8er Boi” is still a banger 20 years later. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to get out that eyeliner and cheap hair gel and head on down to the cinema for a throwback experience to remember.