Photo by Li Yang
Canadian singer, songwriter, and actress Avril Lavigne started her music career at the age of 16, dropping out of High School to pursue her dream in 1999 and signing a multimillion-dollar record deal with Arista Records. She professes a Catholic faith, but writes secular pop, punk, pop-rock, alternative rock, and post-grunge music. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with secular music. I myself regularly listen to original soundtracks from 8-bit video games such as Megaman, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda.
Lavigne is the recipient of several awards and nominations, too many to list here. She will begin her sixth concert tour in September 2019, which includes the subject of this review: Head Above Water.
Lyrics can be found at https://genius.com/Avril-lavigne-head-above-water-lyrics.
Note to new users: This is a different kind of review site! Read About the Berean Test and Evaluation Criteria prior to reading this review.
1. What message does the song communicate?
The entire song is a reflection of Avril Lavigne’s battle with Lyme Disease, which helps to contextualize the entire song as her own personal journey toward healing. Her heartfelt song reflects emotional toil, attempting to save her life, and realizing only God can save her. She uses the concept of storm and rescue to communicate with her audience.
I have one criticism. The Bridge’s end contains a self-motivated attitude, significantly marring Lavigne’s otherwise good message about rescue.
Score: 8/10
2. How much of the lyrics line up with Scripture?
Verse 1 contains an unbiblical attitude, but addressed in the Bridge. The end of the Bridge also contains two honest, but unbiblical, remarks.
[Verse 1]
Lines 1-4: This is a correct attitude, to stay calm and not be afraid. Self-defense can be a Biblical concept, depending upon circumstances.
Also, she only wants her portion, neither to be poor or rich (Proverbs 30:7-9).
Lines 5-8: This is a rewording of the expression “I’m fighting for my life”, meaning threatening disaster that may destroy one’s own life. This contradicts Matthew 16:25, Luke 9:24, and Luke 17:33 as it contains a “pull myself up by my own bootstraps” attitude. As we will see in the Bridge, Lavigne acknowledges and corrects this error.
[Chorus]
Lines 1 and 2: A prayer offered to God for help. She casts her anxiety on God (Matthew 11:28-30, Philippians 4:6-7, and 1 Peter 5:7).
Lines 3 and 4: That is, at the cross (Hebrews 7:27 and Hebrews 9:14).
Lines 5-7: Save me! Save me! Save me! That’s what Jesus’ disciples said on a boat in the sea of Galilee (Matthew 14:30). It is also the attitude of David in Psalm 69:1-4.
Line 8: That is, I’m treading water, on my own steam. It isn’t working.
Line 9: See lines 5-7.
[Bridge]
Lines 1-4: Confession of wrongdoing described in Verse 1.
Lines 5-7: More prayers. Line 7 seems to be a self-focused remark, as if to say God must rescue because I am important. I do not believe that was Lavigne’s intent, but that is the unfortunate consequence of her word choice.
Line 8: That is, too young to die. Though an honest statement, it is vanity (Ecclesiastes 11:10). Nobody is too young to die.
[Outro]
Lines 1-5: Repeats Chorus, lines 5-9.
Score: 8/10
3. How would an outsider interpret the song?
The world will likely accept this song as dependent on God. Which deity Lavigne refers is not immediately clear. Her statements at the end of Bridge are unfortunately because others could adopt this self-focused attitude that Lavigne likely didn’t intend.
Score: 5/10
4. What does this song glorify?
This song mostly glorifies God. through prayer offered to God for rescue; However, Lavigne’s words at the end of the Bridge make it difficult to fully say “yes”.
Score: 8/10
Closing Comments
Avril Lavigne’s Head Above Water makes a valiant effort to disseminate her hard-fought struggle with Lyme Disease. It certainly provides an emotional impact. There are some good, Biblical takeaways, that we should admit when we are wrong and offer prayer to God. However, I cannot ignore the expressed (though perhaps unintended) attitude of vanity and remorse towards the end of the song. It negatively affects the message, biblical accuracy, and inherent glorification of God.
I do not recommend this song for any church functions.
Final Score: 7.5/10
Artist Info
Track: Head Above Water (listen to the song) (buy the song)
Artist: Avril Lavigne
Album: Head Above Water (buy the album)
Genre: Pop
Release Year: 2018
Duration: 3:40
Agree? Disagree? Don’t be shy or have a cow! Calmly and politely state your case in a comment, below.
Updates:
01/03/2022 – After reading Beth’s comments, I toned down my criticism of Bridge’s ending and removed my commentary on repentence vs. remorse. I also updated section 3 to include criticism on lack of pointers to a specific deity and removed “word of faith” possibility. Finally, I increased the score for sections 1, 2, and 4, raising this song’s overall rating from 6.5/10 to 7.5/10.
08/01/2020 – Chris Lamech mentioned that I left out Psalm 69 in my commentary. I added it to Chorus.
I was also too harsh in my grading. I adjusted my scores, raising this song’s rating from 5.5/10 to 6.5/10.
Comments
Chris Lamech
Regarding Avril Lavigne, you never mentioned Psalm 69 where most of the lyrics to my mind come from. Maybe she doesn’t realise it either.??? Blessings
Vince Wright
Chris,
Thank you for your comment! I added it to my commentary on Chorus.
-Vince Wright
Beth
I came across this review some time ago, and something didn’t sit quite right with me. Coming back to read it again later, I think I’ve figured out what the problem is, for me.
I disagree with the idea that “I fall down to my knees” in the chorus must be either an expression of repentance or remorse. I interpret it as neither of those, but rather as an expression of desperate dependence, and therefore as an appropriate part of a song that, to me, is a cry for help and an expression of honest need for God’s help in a time of reaching the end of oneself.
In the post you state that the “song is a reflection of Avril Lavigne’s battle with Lyme Disease.” I’ve done a little reading about Lavigne’s health journey. For a time she was bedbound and unable to take care of herself. Her journey of illness and recovery lasted several years.
I myself have gone through a similar health journey. I didn’t have Lyme Disease, but I had health issues that caused similar problems, including chronic pain. At times I was so ill that I felt like I was dying, but doctors were unable to help me figure out what the problems were. I’ve had to figure out most things completely on my own. These very ill times stretched out for days, weeks, even months at a time.
At the times where I was in so much pain and unable to be helped, I felt like I was neither going to die nor able to fully live. I was too sick to feel my emotions and too sick to fully comprehend my own thoughts. In these moments I did not have the capacity to be fully feel remorse or to fully comprehend my own need for repentance for various things.
However, what I did have was the ability to grasp that I was in need and that I didn’t fully understand my own needs at the time. (The things I thought I needed at the time I was not getting, so I knew that I must have not fully understood my own needs.) In those times I would, yes, get down on my knees and cry out to God knowing that I needed His help but didn’t understand what I needed. And that is exactly what I would pray, something like this:
“God, please help me. I’m at the end of my rope. I’m in so much pain that I feel like I’m dying. I barely have the brainpower to pray this prayer. But I’m not dying – I continue to live, yet unable to fully exercise the gifts that you’ve given me, unable to fully pursue the dreams that you’ve put in my heart.
God, why? What can I do? I feel like all I can do now is the little I am capable of while being so sick, and wait for you to rescue me and help me get better. When will that happen? I’m in so much pain! Yet, I know that you must know what’s best for me. It’s what I’ve always chosen to believe. So I must make the choices that align with this belief now when things are difficult, not just when things are easy.
Oh, please help me, God! I’m in agony, but I will wait for you to help me. Please deliver me soon!”
That kind of prayer is exactly the way I read this song by Avril Lavigne. Some of the lines that you had issues with, I read as part of a similar prayer to what I have written above.
To me, “Come rescue me, I’ll be waiting” is to be taken at face value. When one is too sick to do much else, what can one do but wait?
To me, “I’m too young to fall asleep” represents some of what I wrote in the prayer above. When you’re so ill that you can’t do very much and that time stretches out for a long period of time, you wonder why God has given you gifts and talents if you can’t use them. You wish that you could have a second chance to use your gifts and pursue that dreams that God has allowed you to have in your heart. You wonder if that will ever happen. I agree that it’s possible that she feels this way without feeling enough reliance on God’s sovereignty. But I think it’s a bit speculative to try to say one way or the other.
As for your fear that outsiders will think that the song implies “that God is a cosmic slot machine that will always rescue us when bad things occur,” I think that this fear is unfounded. I don’t think that this song implies that at all. I don’t see any indication in the lyrics that Lavigne is saying that God will always make things happy and comfortable just if we ask him. On the contrary, the song seems to me to leave the ending of the story open. We don’t see the ending of the story. All we see is the cry for help.
On that same point, I disagree with your premise that God won’t rescue us when bad things occur. If we really know and trust in Him, He has already rescued us through Jesus, first of all! And second of all, of course He will help us! It just doesn’t always happen on our timetable and we may not see the full deliverance until we die or Jesus comes again and we are with Jesus face to face. But I don’t think it’s bad for the song to imply that God will rescue us. In my opinion, the first recourse in trouble is to ask God for help, and to me, that’s exactly what this song is about.
I agree that this song isn’t really meant for church functions. But, I don’t think it was written with that intent in the first place. Having gone through times of desperation and feeling deathly ill for an extended period of time, this song really describes well what it is like to be at that desperate place and be crying out to God for help.
When you’re so sick, you feel very alone. To me, this song is about helping others see that they are not the only ones going through difficult times, and that it’s okay to be waiting for God and not know how or when He will provide the help you need.
Thanks!