Avril Lavigne in Brazil: Remember the 2014 Comedy Meet and Greet

Avril Lavigne returns to Brazil this week to perform in São Paulo (September 7th) and Rio de Janeiro (September 9th). It is the first time that the singer has performed in the country in 8 years, after one of the biggest controversies of her stays in tropical lands.

The year was 2014. avril was in her 30s and had just released her fifth studio album, which bore the singer’s own name. In January, then, she started a new tour to promote the album.

The first dates of The Avril LavigneTour were marked in Asia and, a few months later, between April and May, the Canadian singer arrived in Brazil. In total, there were five dates divided between São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Brasília.

Far beyond the usual tickets for presentations, however, the five shows that avril would do around here would still have a meet and greet Special. Thus, given the possibility of meeting the singer in person, fans of avril sold out all tickets — despite the exclusive meeting costing R$800, not including the ticket price.

That’s how, on April 29, 2014, dozens of fans of the singer went to Citibank Hall, in São Paulo, ready to watch the first show of the tour and then take pictures with Avril Lavigne. The end of the story, however, was not at all as expected.

Internet bubbling

Shortly after the first concert dates of avril took place in Brazil, the images of the Meet and Greets with fans began to be published on the internet. And there was a very comical characteristic in common among all the photos: in each of the meetings, the singer seemed to be more and more distant from her admirers, without touching anyone.

So began one of the most enduring jokes of the time, with montages being created every second to mock the Canadian’s bizarre relationship with her fans on the day of the show. Before long, memes were created and a page on Tumblr began to gather the best satires of photos taken on the meet and greet.

With rumors that the images would have turned out that way because the avril didn’t want her fans to touch her, it didn’t take long for the story to go viral. Photos of the Brazilians next to the Canadian even ended up in the international media.

Viewpoints

As soon as the images began to circulate all over the internet, there was no shortage of stories to try to justify what would have happened in the fateful Meet and Greets gives The Avril LavigneTour in Brazil. The version that most attracted attention, in this sense, was that avril refused to contact fans, demanding distancing.

According to a report published by The globe in the same year, however, many other admirers of the singer came to claim that the discomfort visible in the images of the meetings would have been the fault of the event’s security guards. According to some people, the employees of T4F itself, responsible for the show, did not allow physical contact.

“On the part of the security guards, we couldn’t hug her, but we asked her directly and she said there was no problem. I touched her, I had time to say ‘I love you’. She was very nice, but she was very shy on account of the security guards. The security guards even hit the hand of those who wanted to hug her”, commented a fan, at the time, to Globo.

In June 2014, a month after the controversial meet and greetthen the own Avril Lavigne commented on the situation, in an interview with Canadian radio Kiss FM. Making it clear that she has no problem touching her fans, the singer pointed out that, in some meetings, as happened in Brazil, strict rules are imposed due to lack of security.

“The meetings are very fast. In some countries we had security problems and, because of that, we were forced to reinforce it. But sometimes, when there are a lot of people, some people spoil it for others. If there was anything before, in the Meet & Greetor someone trying to get into the hotel, things like that, they have to take extra precautions,” he explained. avril.

It turns out that, years later, despite the singer’s justification, the photos of that fateful meet and greet 2014 are still one of the biggest jokes related to the singer’s passage through Brazil. The controversy is only greater than the theory that the singer would have been replaced by a lookalike years ago – a story that was even created by a Brazilian.