“Bad Girl” is the Avril Lavigne and Marilyn Manson duet on her fifth studio album, Avril Lavigne (2013), that makes BDSM and erotic asphyxiation the lyric, not the metaphor. Lavigne, Chad Kroeger, and David Hodges wrote it; Kroeger and Hodges produced it; Manson’s guest vocal is the choke-play invitation that opens the track. Critics heard a departure from her earlier pop-punk singles — nu metal and pop with industrial, glam, and 1970s punk grit — and they split over whether the result was glorious chaos or cartoon smut. For kink listeners it is one of the few chart-adjacent pop songs that actually names breath play and a daddy/bad-girl script instead of hinting at handcuffs in a radio-safe chorus.
The collaboration sits on a real friendship, not a label-arranged cameo. Lavigne met Manson at one of his concerts when she was eighteen; they became friends. She has cited his band’s 2004 song “This Is the New Shit” as an influence. On 7 July 2012 reports claimed she was dating him. He denied it, joking that he would never date a Canadian, then added that he knew her and had “accidentally shaved her head.” Lavigne’s version: she had wanted to shave the side of her head for some time. On a trip to France they were drinking backstage with his band; she said she was ready; he did it. She liked that he had fun, wore makeup, and treated wardrobe as a visual project. In a Billboard interview she called “Bad Girl” one of the “darker and heavier” rock songs on the self-titled album and said recruiting Manson “was last minute.” She was listening to the track with Hodges when she decided Manson would be perfect. She texted him at four in the morning. About half an hour later he arrived at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles. He played her some of his new songs; she played him some of hers, including “Give You What You Like” (2013), which he loved, and “Bad Girl.” The moment he heard it, he knew what he wanted to add. She told MTV News she was honored to work with him, pleased with his vocal, and that the song was one of her favorites on the album.
The track is a nu metal and pop song with industrial rock, glam rock, and 1970s punk rock in the mix. It opens with Manson: “Just lay your head in daddy’s lap, you’re a bad girl.” Nick Catucci of Entertainment Weekly compared that croak to Cookie Monster. Crunching guitars carry a lyric about BDSM in which Lavigne asks Manson to choke her. She sings “I’ve been a bad girl, don’t you know? / Come get it now or never / I’ll let you do whatever” and “Miss me. Miss me. Now you wanna kiss me,” purring and screaming at different points. Laurence Green of musicOMH wrote that it sounds like the soundtrack to the scene in every corny teen movie where the good girl decides to “let loose.” Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, noting Kroeger of Nickelback as co-writer, heard the “blunt force hooks and bad taste” of a Nickelback song. Jon Caramanica of The New York Times found Kroeger’s impact on the track — and on most of the album — negligible. Tiffany Bentley of Metal Insider tied the lyrics to the dating rumors, heard more of Manson’s band than of Lavigne’s bubblegum, and called it edgier than most of her previous work. Mike Wass of Idolator said that while “Here’s to Never Growing Up” and “Rock n Roll” (both 2013) covered old ground, “Bad Girl” left her comfort zone.
Jason Lipshutz of Billboard called it “salacious, sloppy, muddied rock music — as it damn well should be,” and praised the pair for turning it into “glorious chaos.” Robert Copsey of Digital Spy praised the punk-rock elements and said the song hinted where her sound could go. Bradley Stern of MuuMuse heard “a manic, unapologetically smutty track.” Caroline Sullivan in The Guardian praised the “particularly pungent” song for “raging against the dying of the light.” The Denver Post listed it among the album’s pop anthems. The other half of the press was colder. Kyle Fowley of Slant Magazine said it lacked the honesty of “Complicated” (2002) and dismissed it as “a dull piece of nü-metal, featuring a phoned-in performance by a disinterested Marilyn Manson.” Chuck Eddy in Rolling Stone found it cartoonish and without the playful spirit of “Hello Kitty,” another album cut. Erlewine found it disgusting, partly because Kroeger — then Lavigne’s husband — had co-written it. Matt Ashare in The News & Advance said Manson added nothing but clichés to a “stupidly creepy” track. For a kink ear, that split is familiar: the same daddy-lap and choke request will read as heat or as a Halloween costume depending on whether the reviewer wants the scene or wants it to stay off pop radio.
Liner notes of Avril Lavigne (Epic Records, 2013) credit Lavigne with lead and backing vocals and songwriting; Kroeger with songwriting, production, and guitar; Hodges with songwriting, production, and programming; Manson with guest vocals; Chad Copelin with programming and bass; Steven Miller with guitar; Justin Glasco with drums; and Chris Lord-Alge with mixing. On release the song reached number 58 on South Korea’s Gaon Chart, selling 4,511 copies in its first week, and number 88 on Billboard’s Canadian Hot 100. On the Avril Lavigne Tour she performed it in a medley with Manson’s 1996 song “The Beautiful People” — a live splice that made the BDSM duet share a stage with the industrial anthem that already owned that aesthetic. The opening line is a dominance script. The chorus offers unlimited permission. The explicit request is erotic asphyxiation. Whether you hear Cookie Monster or a scene partner, the song put breath play and a bad-girl/daddy frame on a major-label pop-rock album in 2013, then took that frame on tour next to “The Beautiful People.” That is why it sits in a BDSM song list rather than in a generic Lavigne discography note.
