Little Miss Can't Be Wrong

Britney Spears may have made it a cliche, but in Lavigne's case it's an apt description: She's not a girl, not yet a woman. "I still feel like a kid," she says. "Even though I take care of myself, I freak out sometimes when it's, like, lawyers, papers. I'm just like, 'Mom!' " And, like a kid playing dress-up, she shows a charming mix of naivete and savvy when she talks about schmoozing up radio-station program directors. "Get a load of my little business idea," she announces to her bandmates one afternoon. "I always make sure I get to meet the program directors and personally shake their hand. And I say, 'Thanks so much for all your support. Please give lots of spins to "Losing Grip." ' Because it means so much more when it comes straight from the artist."

Lavigne doesn't have a boyfriend right now, but she says she's not sweating it since she's too busy and, besides, most of the boys who want to meet her have a tough time getting past her bodyguard. Her attitudes about dating are pretty old-fashioned, which isn't surprising considering the rules her mom enforced when she was a kid. "I wasn't allowed to have a guy in my room," Lavigne says. "Especially not with the door shut. And she wouldn't let me call guys. They had to call me. I have that attitude now -- that if a guy wants to hook up with me, he can come after me. I'm not going running after him." At the time, she recalls, she hated all those restrictions. Now she realizes they were for the best: "That's a good way to bring up your kid, because if you let your kid do everything -- go to parties, get trashed really young and get out of control -- she's gonna get taken advantage of, and she won't be taught that having sex with a ton of boys is a bad thing. I do a lot of things that are very rebellious, but it's not like I'm sniffing coke or doing dirty stuff."

Her requirements for boyfriends are simple. "I need a guy who's sensitive," she says. "I need a guy with edge. And most importantly, a guy has to give me lots of attention and hug me all the time." She says that "Losing Grip" -- her favorite song on Let Go -- was inspired by a boyfriend who didn't value her enough. "Right now I feel invisible to you," goes one lyric.

"I was this guy's girlfriend, and he didn't even treat me like it," she says. "If he sat there with his arm around me, it was just because I was his chick. It wasn't like [wrapping her arms around imaginary person], 'Oh, baby. I love you.' "

If the cute sadness of that scenario doesn't melt your cold, cold heart, try this pubescent romance narrative: "Too Much to Ask" is about a summer crush who smoked too much weed and blew Lavigne off more often than he should have. "He'd choose to go get high instead of be with me in certain situations," she recalls. "He was never my boyfriend or anything. I was pissed off at the summer crush. I mean, he was a dick. I liked him. And I wanted something. And he liked me. But if I had a boyfriend, I would cherish him so much. I might look like a tough chick -- and I am -- but I'm also a hopeless romantic inside."

In "Unwanted," she addresses rejection by one boyfriend's parents with the line, "I just don't understand why you won't talk to me."

"It's important when you have a boyfriend to go over to the house and bond with the parents," she says. "I was really polite to them. I had dinner with them at the table, and I had my manners, like, 'Can I help you with anything? Can I wash the dishes?' But they didn't want me with their boy. I guess they thought I was a bit wild for him. And I was so hurt by that."

But Lavigne is a bit of a hellion. In Tokyo, during a drive to TV Asahi, a Japanese channel she's performing on, Lavigne points out the window at a gigantic Ferris wheel that rises above the skyline. Last time she was here, she says, she and her guitarist, Evan Taubenfeld, dropped trou on the ride and mooned the people in the car behind them. "The first night we hung out, she took us to a bar," says drummer Brann. "Within five minutes she's like, 'We're gonna do body shots. Pour salt on my neck and then lick it.' We were doing tequila, tequila, tequila right away. I was like, 'This girl is insane. This is going to be like Motley Crue.' "