Byline: Mark Sutherland

Move over Britney, skatepunk chick Avril Lavigne is the new queen of the schoolyard, says Mark Sutherland

First it was Britney, then Christina. Now there is yet another unfeasibly youthful female dominating the charts. But before you file her under "teen-pop sensation", consider that Avril Lavigne, an 18-year-old from small-town Canada, is a different ball game.

Her debut album Let Go -on which she co-wrote every track -has more in common with the scuzzy guitar rock of Blink 182 and Sum 41 than her highly produced, R&B-apeing peers. Yet her music has a crossover appeal that such punkers can only dream of -Let Go has sat in the US Top 10 for five whole months, while her single Complicated hasn't budged from the UK Top 20 in six weeks.

But it isn't just Lavigne's music that is cut from a different cloth -her clothes are, too. When Spears donned school uniform for the video of Baby...One More Time she established that young female artists should never be knowingly overdressed. Yet Lavigne wears skatepunk...