Review here of Avril Lavigne's Sunday night concert in western Palm Beach County. I spent some of it talking about the ever-present-tense in Lavigne's songs. (From He Wasn't: "There's not much going on today/I'm really bored. It's gettin' late/What happened to my Saturday?/Monday's comin', the day I hate/Sit on the bed alone, starin' at the phone") But there's also some nostalgia at work - or at least that's what I think I'm hearing.

All told, Lavigne sounds wistful for the typical teen-aged high-school experience she never had complete. She went after a music career starting in her early teens, so she had, as they say, other priorities. She became a label pro at 16. But string together songs like Innocence, Girlfriend The Best Damn Thing, Sk8er Boi and others, and Lavigne has constructed her very own high school musical.

She's not the first entertainer to make grades 9-12 her muse. Leslie Gore, the Beach Boys and the Ramones - to name a few - drew great inspiration from that stage of life. There's even a band, The Go! Team, whose whole concept is an arch celebration/examination of school spirit and teendom. But there's an unusual, un-ironic persistence to Lavigne's identification with it that's lasted three albums, numerous videos and assorted tours. It's as if she's using her career to imagine a life without the job she's got.