Her 15-minute audition "so impressed" Reid, he immediately signed her to Arista with a deal worth $1.25 million for two albums and an extra $900,000 for a publishing advance. By this time, Lavigne had found that she fit in naturally with her hometown high school's skater clique, an image that carried through to her first album, but although she enjoyed skateboarding, school left her feeling insecure. Armed with a record deal, she dropped out to focus on her music career, but she still had to inform her parents of her decision. "I wasn't going to turn the record deal down. It's been my dream all my life. They knew how much I wanted this and how much I've put into it."
Reid gave A&R Joshua Sarubin the responsibility for overseeing Lavigne's development and the recording of her debut album. They spent several months in New York working with different co-writers trying to forge an individual sound for her. Sarubin told HitQuarters that for while they struggled finding her sound and although early collaborations with songwriter-producers including Sabelle Breer, Curt Frasca and Peter Zizzo, resulted in some good songs, they didn't match her and her voice. It was only when Lavigne then went to Los Angeles in May 2001 and created two songs with The Matrix production team – including "Complicated" – that the record company felt she had made a major breakthrough. Lavigne then worked further with The Matrix and also with singer-songwriter Cliff Magness. Recording finished in January 2002.
Lavigne released her debut album, Let Go, on 4 June 2002 in the U.S., where it reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200. It peaked at No. 1 on the Australian, Canadian, and UK charts. This made Lavigne, at 17 years old, the youngest female soloist to have a No. 1 album in the UK until that time. By the end of 2002, the album was certified four-times platinum by the RIAA, making her the bestselling female artist of 2002 and Let Go the top-selling debut of the year. By May 2003, Let Go had accumulated over 1,000,000 sales in Canada, receiving a diamond certification from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. As of 2009, the album has sold over 16 million units worldwide, and the RIAA has certified the album six-times platinum, denoting shipments of over six million units in the U.S.
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