Lavigne responds to plagiarism claim

Avril Lavigne has denied claims that she stole lyrics when writing her Girlfriend single.

The Canadian singer was baffled when she heard that songwriters James Gangwer and Tommy Dunbar were suing her over the song, which they claim infringes upon their 1979 track I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, performed by pop band The Rubinoos.

The lawsuit is based on the fact that the Rubinoos' track contains the lyric, "Hey, hey, you, you, I wanna be your boyfriend," and Lavigne sings, "Hey, hey, you, you, I want to be your girlfriend" in her single.

"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," Lavigne explained on her Myspace page.

"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 5 words! All songs share similar lyrics and emotions. As humans we speak one language.

"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."