By Maria Myka (media@latinospost.com) | First Posted: Apr 24, 2014 11:05 PM EDT

Avril Lavigne has had her share of musical experiments, and for her new video, she decided to go on another direction, but maybe not in the best way.

The rocker's "Hello Kitty" video has sparked some controversy for being "terribly racist."

The upbeat song showed the rocker in a cupcake tutu, traipsing along the streets of Tokyo with expressionless Asians dressed as her backup and following her closely. She was also shown to play air guitar, drink sake, and even sing in Japanese.

Jason Lipshutz from Billboard Magazine wrote, "[This] video is an embarrassment in any language."

According to him, the video tries to do nothing. He added, "Its laziness is demonstrated in the first 21 seconds, during which Lavigne holds a plush stack of cupcakes, shakes her hips, stares at the cupcakes, bounces her shoulders, and then, when she sings the line 'Someone chuck a cupcake at me'... tosses the fake cupcakes at the camera, her lip movement not matching up to the backing track whatsoever."

This is particularly sad, especially since he has nothing but praises for the Canadian star's self-titled fifth album, saying that "the music videos previously released from Lavigne's largely dismissed new album have been pretty excellent, actually."

Lavigne took the issue to Twitter, writing, "RACIST??? LOLOLOL!!! I love Japanese culture and I spend half of my time in Japan."

In a report by Digital Spy, the singer defended her video by saying, "I flew to Tokyo to shoot this video specifically for my Japanese fans, WITH my Japanese label, Japanese choreographers AND a Japanese director IN Japan."

She also added, "Obviously it's flirtatious and somewhat sexual, but it's genuinely about my love for Hello Kitty as well!"

That may be so, but many seemed to think otherwise. What do you think: are people being to touchy about racism, or is the rocker's song and video a genuine cause for alarm?

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