Avril Ramona Lavigne CM is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She is a key musician in the development of pop-punk music, as she paved the way for female-driven, punk-influenced pop music in the early 2000s. Her accolades include eight Grammy Award nominations.

Avril Ramona Lavigne was born on September 27, 1984, in Belleville, Ontario. She was named Avril (the French word for April) by her father. He and Lavigne's mother recognized their child's vocal abilities when she was two years old and sang "Jesus Loves Me" on the way home from church. Lavigne has an older brother named Matthew and a younger sister named Michelle, both of whom teased her when she sang. "My brother used to knock on the wall because I used to sing myself to sleep and he thought it was really annoying." She is the sister-in-law of Japanese band One OK Rock bassist Ryota Kohama. Lavigne's paternal grandfather Maurice Yves Lavigne was born in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec. A member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, he married Lucie Dzierzbicki, a French native of Morhange in 1953. Their son, Jean-Claude Lavigne, was born in 1954 at RCAF Station Grostenquin near Grostenquin, Lorraine. When Jean-Claude was a child, the family moved to Ontario, and in 1975, he married Judith-Rosanne "Judy" Loshaw