Avril: "I ripped off the Ramones and Stones, too"

Avril Lavigne has issued an angry statement denying ripping off I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend for her song Girlfriend. Apparently, it's all a terrible misunderstanding because of the limits of the English language:

"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 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."

To us, that sounds like the remaining and estates of The Ramones and Mick and Keith should probably be ringing up their lawyers, too. Not only because of the admission of similarity, but also because we'd love to see someone in court explaining that their song sounds the same because "all songs share similar lyrics" - which, at last, explains why Michael Rowed The Boat Ashore and Cop Killer are so alike.