Although you're flattered that Avril Lavigne said she thinks your girlfriend is crap and that she'd be a better girlfriend than your current girlfriend in her song – we forget what it's called – don't be, because Avril's ideas might not be her own.

It's being reported that Avril Lavigne is being sued by a songwriter who claims that Avril Lavigne's hit single Girlfriend was stolen from one of his old songs. Although Avril Lavigne and her management deny this claim completely, it doesn't stop us from being surprised by a couple of things: 1) Who'd actually want to admit that they wrote Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne in the first place? What sort of compensation does this songwriter expect? A thump in the gob? Also, 2) the song that it's claimed Avril Lavigne stole for Girlfriend is a song other than Hey Mickey. Wonders will never cease.

There's a small part of hecklerspray that's always wanted to be Avril Lavigne. Possibly it's because we're jealous that Avril married the boy from Sum 41 with the Play-Doh face before we could, possibly it's because Avril Lavigne lives in quite a big house, or possibly it's because Avril Lavigne seems to be so blissfully untroubled by thought or any basic understanding of anything that she can float through life like a fairy surfing on a cloud.

However, the rest of us wouldn't like to be Avril Lavigne at all, especially not now that she's being sued by a songwriter who claims she stole her hit song Girlfriend from him. Tommy Dunbar, founder of 1970s group The Rubinoos, alleges that Avril Lavigne got her idea for the bit of Girlfriend that goes "Hey! Hey! You! You! I don't like your girlfriend" from the bit of Rubinoos song I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend that goes "Hey! Hey! You! You! I wanna be your boyfriend" as ABC reports:

Canadian punk princess Avril Lavigne is being sued by U.S. songwriters who claim that her smash hit "Girlfriend" sounds suspiciously like a track they took up the charts in the 1970s. Lavigne's manager, Terry McBride, says the pop starlet is one of several people named in a lawsuit filed July 2 that alleges striking similarities to the Rubinoos song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend." … McBride says from Vancouver that the claim is baseless, noting that a musicologist he hired to study both tracks has deemed them completely different songs.

Baseless, eh? Let's compare. Here's I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend by The Rubinoos and here's a cack-handed, yet still relevant, remix of Girlfriend by Avril Lavigne. We couldn't possibly say whether or not Avril Lavigne ripped off The Rubinoos, although the choruses to each song could be said to sound a little alike. Then again, we couldn't tell if Beyonce was ripping off Des'ree either. True, that's because we'd rather hack off our ears and liquidise them than listen to a song by either Beyonce, Des'ree or Avril Lavigne, but that's beside the point.

Of course, Avril Lavigne's case does get a little bit stronger when you realise that The Rubinoos weren't the inspiration for all of Girlfriend. The video for I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend doesn't feature three annoyingly bratty young women played by the same attention-seeking, pretend rebellious girl, for example. And the video for Girlfriend does. Whether she stole the song or not, we just want the case to be settled as quickly as possible so that Avril Lavigne can do the thing she's most famous for – getting drunk and being an arsehole in public.

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Did Avril Steal 'Girlfriend'? – ABC