"Losing Grip"
Typically, whenever I got a new CD as a teen, I would listen through it and decide, with a swift and picky ear, which tracks were going to be my favorites. This one was not one of my favorites on this album, but I did occasionally play this one when I was frustrated with a particular male friend (the same friend whose complicated interaction with me would cause me to identify so readily with track 2...)
The lyrical content is pretty accessible, even simplistic - we all know what situation Avril is referring to. There are spots, like "grinning with a lost stare" (huh?) and "cause you weren't there when I was scared" (scared of what?) where she clouds the narrative in favor of rhyming, but it's still better than the pop music I was writing at 17. A mini-catharsis occurs when we go from the verse or the bridge/breakdown into the chorus, going from a muted acoustic-driven sound with Avril singing in her middle register to electrics and a quasi-yell on "WHYYYYYYYYYYY should I CAAAAAAAAAARE?" To my ear and sensibilities, this initial line of the chorus is the best alignment of lyric, melody and instrumentation in the song. It would not surprise me if this line was what came to her first, a visceral cry in response to her beloved's neglect, around which she then constructed the rest of the song.
One vocal technique that is typical among pop musicians then and since is the changing of a vowel during a held syllable with multiple notes. (I realize there is a musical word for that and I know what that word is, but the Eternal Overlooking Spirit of Your Theory Teacher won't let me use it in reference to a Lavigne song.) In the first verse, "...like I'm not reh-eee-eh-eee-ehl." Or in the bridge, "crying out lah-eee-yowd." I suppose it's a security blanket to help keep the notes clearly differentiated from each other, so that it's obvious to a pop listener that she intends there to be multiple notes and she isn't just wobbling from nerves or inexperience. Either that or her voice doesn't move smoothly or easily and she uses the physical motion of changing her vowel shape to help it move.
Harmonically, it follows a lot of the conventions of angsty music of the period (We'll say, 1990 to 2005, The Nirvanian Style...I am totes Music Historian Barbie right now.) Minor character...because of the absence of the "si" leading tone and the dominant chord it lives with and the occasional appearance of the "fi" in a couple of chords, I might even refer to it as being modal if I were in the mood to bug the aforementioned EOSoYTT. The majorized IV in a minor song was widely used in mopey rock music to give it a raw, unstable feel to ears that were accustomed to relentlessly diatonic pop/rock. The tonal center shifts for the bridge, a piece of harmonic interest that only lasts a few bars before we're back to hollering at Mr. Wrong for the last few choruses.
Gotta love the little alteration she makes to the last lines of the last couple of choruses: "If you don't care, then I don't care / We're not going anywhere." The musical equivalent of one teen yelling "Well FINE then!" to another.
