Avril Lavigne has responded to those previously reported allegations that her song 'Girlfriend' copies key components of a 1970s pop record by US band The Rubinoos.
As previously reported, The Rubinoos founding member and chief songwriter Tommy Dunbar began legal proceedings against Lavigne last week claiming that her recent hit borrows heavily from his 1978 song 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend'. Confirming the litigation, Dunbar's lawyer, Nicholas Carlin, told reporters: "She's made a lot of money off of my client's song. The entire song is not the same, they have different bridges, but the heart and soul of her song is directly taken from our client's song".
Lavigne's manager Terry McBride has already labeled Dunbar's lawsuit as "baseless", and now the singer herself has made comment via her blog. She writes: "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".
She continues: "Off the top of my head, two other songs that I can immediately think of with this type of lyric are 'Hey, hey, you, you get off of my cloud' by the Rolling Stones and 'Hey little girl I want to be your boyfriend' by the Ramones. Simply put, I have been falsely accused of ripping their song off. Luke and I have done nothing wrong and there is no merit to their claim".
It's interesting that Avril references the Stones track, because one CMU reader and self-confessed former The Rubinoos fan had already pointed out that the chorus of 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend' was a bit of steal of 'Get Off My Cloud', making Dunbar's lawsuit a bit cheeky. McBride has indicated he might settle out of court with The Rubinoos man because of the cost of defending the lawsuit, even though he is confident he'd win (in a similar case involving another of his artists he won but failed to get his legal costs covered because the plaintiff went bankrupt), but should this one get to court it will be interesting to see if those other songs with similar choruses will get referenced.