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The differences between the two are more apparent in the music. While Avril channels her inner Sum 41, Dobson was raised on grunge.
"I was 14 when I really started to write, and that's when I listened to [Silverchair's] Neon Ballroom and I realized he wasn't afraid to write all his feelings on paper," Dobson said, referring to frontman Daniel Johns. "Then I got into Nirvana and that's where my sound took shape. Now I listen to Jeff Buckley and the Beatles, but then also Michael Jackson."
A few years into writing, Dobson joined forces with someone who could give her the guitar muscle she desired, producer Jay Levine, who helmed her album. She also inked a deal with Nelly Furtado's manager, Chris Smith, who arranged several showcases in her home city of Toronto, including one for Island Def Jam head Lyor Cohen.
"Literally within the first 30 seconds of the first song, he was jumping up and down and saying he wanted to sign me," Dobson said.
Fefe was quickly whisked away to New York to record her album, which features a cameo from "Wild Thing" rapper Tone Loc on the party tune "Rock It Til You Drop It." The first single, "Take Me Away," is just hitting radio.
"I'm a hopeless romantic and it's about love," Dobson said of the song. "It's about two people wanting to be together, but they can't, whether it's because of religion, race or age, or maybe their parents just don't like the guy or girl. ... I was really into 'Sid & Nancy' at the time."
Skye Sweetnam, 15, has already achieved some success with her first single, "Billy S.," which appeared on the "How to Deal" soundtrack and scored serious airplay in Canada.
"I wrote that song about coming home from school with a lot of homework, and I said, 'I don't wanna do any homework, I wanna write a song,' " explained Sweetnam, whose personality lives up to the sweet in her name. "I think it really captures the moment and how I felt. It's just kind of rebellious and me kind of complaining and venting about school and how much I was annoyed by it."
Sweetnam, who has long, dark hair and stunning green eyes, wrote her first song when she was 9. She got involved in musical theater in Bolton, Ontario, but didn't imagine singing as a career until her mom forgot to sign her up for snowboarding camp and enrolled her in pop stars camp instead. "You learn auditioning techniques, you get your hair done, you get pictures done, you sing over karaoke tracks," she explained.
Those tracks caught the ear of the woman who ran the camp, who then produced Sweetnam's first demo. The singer's grandmother caught wind of the tape and told her friends at the salon, who demanded a performance when Sweetnam walked by one afternoon. One of the women getting her hair done had a brother who is an entertainment lawyer, and he recruited Zack Werner, the Simon Cowell of "Canadian Idol," to manage Sweetnam.
Werner later connected Sweetnam with producer James Robertson, who recorded her in the home studio of his parents' basement (hence the title Noise From the Basement). "He let me do whatever I wanted," Sweetnam said. "If I came to him and said I wanted a tribal song with a horror film score, he would do it. And he is really good at guitar, and as soon as I saw that, I had to put some guitar riffs in there."
Sweetnam recorded a cover of Blondie's "Heart of Glass," but otherwise she co-wrote all the songs. "I get inspired by everyday things," she said. "One day I was jumping on my bed, pretending I was a rock star, and made that a song."
Her straightforward approach to songwriting mirrors some of Lavigne's work, but she considers it "totally different." "She's a girl who knows what she wants and she rocks, and that's what we have in common," Sweetnam said.
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Photo: Island
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