¶ … Avril Lavigne "Complicated"

"Complicated" is a song by Avril Lavigne from her 2002 debut album, Let Go. In interviews, Lavigne alleges that the lyrics refer to the duality of people that she has witnessed, including her ex-boyfriends and female friends. By taking a closer look into the lyrics, there are several themes that emerge. Among the themes that can be found in the lyrics of the song "Complicated" are duplicity and conformity, or a lack thereof. The themes of duplicity and conformity/non-conformity help to highlight the concepts of identity, self-presentation, and face.

In the song "Complicated," Lavigne is complacent with who she is and what she does. However, it soon becomes relevant that she finds herself at odds with a presumed significant other who has changed from the person that she knew, and possibly fell in love with, into a different person with different ideals. It is in the second stanza that the audience is first introduced to Lavigne's complacency with who she is and what she is...

By telling her significant other, the unnamed subject of the song, to "chill out, what you yelling for?/Lay back, it's all been done before" not only does she reveal that she views herself as ordinary, but also wishes others to be ordinary like her. She seems to look down on the unnamed subject for wanting to change and be extraordinary. Moreover, she continues to point out how the unnamed subject appears to have changed, from his behavior to the way he dresses and attempts to tell him to not change and to stay the same person that she has always known. She comments that he is "dressed up, like you're something else" and that he should just "take off, all your preppy clothes" because he isn't fooling anybody. Lavigne also contends that people cannot change who they nor can they change how they live there lives saying "Life's like this/You fall and you crawl and you break/And you take what you get."
Lavigne uses the way the unnamed subject dresses to point out how much he has changed. This concept can be analyzed in…