Avril Lavigne has nothing but love for her exes.
Avril Lavigne has nothing but love for her exes.
The 34-year-old singer covers the latest issue of Billboard magazine, and talks about her famous relationships. Lavigne looks back on her marriage to Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger, whom she got engaged to in 2012 after only a month of dating. The two were introduced by her manager at the time, who suggested she work with him. She shares that he brought a $3,000 bottle of Screaming Eagle wine to their first session, leading her to think, "Like, I’m in love?"
“He’s had a ton of hit songs. He plays guitar. This could be great,” Lavigne shares about what she was thinking before they met. “A month later, I had a 14-carat ring on my finger.”
Though she announced their separation in 2015, they're still close, and Lavigne defends Kroeger, whose band has been criticized in the past.
“Chad’s band has sold, like, over 50 million albums!" she notes. "They’re selling out arenas worldwide!"
She also reflects on her first husband, Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley. The two married in 2006 when she was 22 years old, but were officially divorced by 2010.
“He’s a good Canadian guy," she says.
As for being divorced twice, Lavigne has no regrets.
“I love love,” she expresses. “The way I looked at it is I married my long-terms.”
Later, Lavigne discusses her serious battle with Lyme disease. She says she started feeling symptoms during her 2014 tour.
“I’m achy, I’m fatigued, I cannot get the f**k out of bed -- what the f**k is wrong with me?” she recalls.
Lavigne says that after numerous doctors couldn't find a cure for her, a friend suggested that she may have Lyme disease, and she called former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Hadid -- who has been open about her own Lyme disease diagnosis -- to get the number of a specialist.
“I was in bed for f**king two years," Lavigne says. “It’s a bug -- a spirochete -- so you take these antibiotics, and they start killing it. But it’s a smart bug: It morphs into a cystic form, so you have to take other antibiotics at the same time. It went undiagnosed for so long that I was kind of f**ked.”
She now regrets not being completely honest about her struggles and brings up her 2015 interview with Good Morning America, in which she broke down in tears while talking about her health battle.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to be brave and tell the world what’s going on.’ And I did it because I was releasing a song for the Special Olympics and I wanted it to do well, so I got forced to sit on camera and talk about it [on GMA]," she explains. "I wasn’t ready, and I shouldn’t have done it. I was a mess. .. [But] I put on a brave face because I didn’t want it to be a part of my identity. So the second I was up, I would take a picture and post it on Instagram and act like my life was f**king great.”
Lavigne's new music is definitely inspired by the difficult period in her life, particularly her new song, "Head Above Water."
“I had accepted that I was dying,” she says of the origin of the song being one particularly bad night when she felt like she couldn't breathe and started to pray. “And I felt in that moment like I was underwater and drowning, and I was trying to come up to gasp for air. And literally under my breath, I was like, ‘God, help me keep my head above the water.'"
Later, she was nervous after stepping into the studio to record it after a years-long break. But of course, her talent was still there.
“God was like, ‘Nope, you’re going to keep doing music,’” she says.
“The silver lining of it is that I’ve really had the time to be able to just be present, instead of being, like, a machine: studio, tour, studio, tour," she now reflects about her battle with Lyme disease. "This is the first break I’ve ever taken since I was 15.”
ET spoke with Lavigne in April, when she made her first red carpet appearance in two years at the 25th Annual Race to Erase MS Gala in Los Angeles.
"I'm feeling a lot better," she said about her current health. "It's been a long time. For me to be able to be here and I'm making a record right now. I have my life back which is amazing. It's something I continue to work at every day. And just, like, grateful to be making music. I've written a really powerful record, really emotional album sort of reflecting where I am today."
Watch below:
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