Avril Lavigne has denied a claim by a member of a 1970s rock band that her hit "Girlfriend" rips off one of his tunes.
Songwriters Tommy Dunbar and James Gangwer allege in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that Lavigne and her co-writers lifted their 1979 song, "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend."
The song was performed by The Rubinoos, which included Dunbar, on their 1979 album, "Back to the Drawing Board."
"We are not so naive as to chalk it up to some sort of cosmic coincidence," Dunbar said last week. "The lyric, the meter, the rhythm -- they're identical."
Terry McBride, Lavigne's manager, said in a statement Monday that "upon the expert opinion of the country's foremost musicologists, there is no basis" for the allegations. The statement was released in an e-mail from a representative at Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which distributes Lavigne's music.
We will let the courts figure this out, but I'll admit the first time I heard Lavigne's song I said to my wife, "I think this is a remake of 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend!'" Evidently, I wasn't the only person to think that.
Lavigne says:
"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."
That is too bad. It is a fabulous song.
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