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Avril Lavigne fights rip-off claims

by lickyourheart | July 9, 2007 at 10:28 am

1711 views | 10 Recommendations | 2 comments

Whether you like Avril Lavigne or not, there's no mistaking that it's interesting to watch her respond to the claims by 70s rock band The Rubinoos that Lavigne stole their song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" for her song "Girlfriend." Listening to both, as you can on YouTube (here and here), it's pretty interesting how well the choruses to these songs align.

Things like this are interesting because there's no real way to prove whether she purposefully stole or not. She (or her writing partner) may have heard the song somewhere and not really processed that they heard it, but unconsciously stole it (The Rubinoos site has some interesting links that allude to how Lavigne would access it). Or, if you want to get flaky, it may have been a universal consciousness thing...something Lavigne refers to below, saying "As humans we speak one language." Don't laugh; she's a serious artist and stuff!!!!!!

However, writing on her blog

Lavigne refuted the accusation, stating she has "never ripped anyone off".

Writing about the Rubinoos accusations she wrote: "You may have heard some news that two guys who wrote for some band from the 1970s I have never in my life heard of called the "Rubinoos" are trying to sue me.

"They have a song called 'I Want To Be Your Boyfriend' that has no musical similarities to the song 'Girlfriend' that Luke Gottwald and I wrote together. They claim that a small part of the lyrics are the same and are saying that I took these from them. I had never heard this song in my life and their claim is based on five words! All songs share similar lyrics and emotions. As humans we speak one language.

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Actual News Geezer

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at 15:11 on July 10th, 2007

lickyourheart, I like what you've done here. This is a big issue - parsing the difference between being "influenced" and plagiarism. This comes up all the time - and the bigger the difference between the popularity between She Who is Influenced and The Influencer - the more interesting the conflict (and the larger the lawsuits!).

Thanks for posting this.

imanivon

at 16:16 on September 9th, 2007

Well, I know the Rubinoos song in question and the chorus is similar with the hand claps and the "hey, hey, you,you". As for the rest of the song...no. Even more so, I think Toni Basil should sue for ripping the whole concept!!