Not that an absurd statement can't be enjoyed for what it is — Echo and the Bunnymen once called an album of theirs "the greatest work of art since Michelangelo's David" — but Wednesday night's show wasn't the best damn anything, really. Near as could be seen, it was simply a conspiracy to sell glowsticks — and at $10 a pop someone was making a killing.

Instead, what the crowd of 11,500 mostly young, screaming girls got was a quick-paced, bare-bones show with a couple of costume changes, dancers and Lavigne inexorably pumping out hits like she was on the clock.