Let's state it at the top: The vast majority of pop music is derivative.
And so it must be said - as the ever-complicated Avril Lavigne is in the news facing questions yet again about her songwriting credentials and allegations of having cribbed material from other artists - that all pop songwriters take elements of the past and spit them out as new songs.
But there's an added element in Lavigne's case: The singer typically holds co-songwriting credits on all her material, and each of her three albums is the product of close collaborations with various songwriters. This has given each Avril CD a distinct flavour while remaining sufficiently insouciant and commercial. Her latest, The Best Damn Thing, released earlier this year, is a deliberate bubble-gum rehash.
News broke this week of a lawsuit filed in California against Lavigne and co-songwriter Dr. Luke, claiming the single Girlfriend has a similar chorus to the Rubinoos' late-1970s song I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend. That came one day after a Globe and Mail story about singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk, who suggested to Performing Songwriter magazine that Lavigne had stolen a song title from her. Added Kreviazuk, disparagingly, "I mean, Avril, a songwriter? Avril doesn't really sit and write songs by herself or anything."
Kreviazuk is said now to regret having made the remark, according to Terry McBride, the head of Nettwerk Music Group (whose management arm has both Lavigne and Kreviazuk as clients). Yet both the lawsuit and Kreviazuk's comment have drawn attention once again to Lavigne's songwriting cred, something her handlers have always noted as a major attribute.
We've heard it before. Lauren Christy of the songwriting-production team the Matrix, which helped Lavigne pen her early hits Complicated and Sk8er Boi, once told Rolling Stone magazine that "we conceived the ideas on guitar and piano" and that "Avril would come in and sing a few melodies, change a word here or there."
McBride said he doesn't understand where this animosity comes from. "This girl [Lavigne]has proven time after time with probably a dozen different songwriters that she's the real deal. How many more times does she have to prove it? The simple fact that she decides to co-write versus writing by herself seems to be the thing that everyone likes to take shots at. And why is it that when someone becomes successful, we have to find something wrong?
"A number of co-writers from the second album are also co-writers on this [latest]album. The girl just delivers time after time after time. Why would writers stay with her, and why would new top-notch writers come in and do multiple songs with her?"
Lavigne's own retort to Christy of the Matrix last April in Entertainment Weekly is even more telling: "Lauren and I would sing melodies and write lyrics together in the backyard on the blanket under an orange tree, and we had a great time. It was like a family. But ... they said some things and burned a bridge." She went on to add angrily that she's the biggest thing that ever happened to the Matrix. The songwriting team has also worked with Hilary Duff, Liz Phair and other artists looking for pop appeal.
What's key is the mention of the blanket and the orange tree. Her label and management have done whatever they could to introduce her to the right collaborators and guide her along like a hot-house flower. Her collaborators have then done all they could to create the right environment. Call it coddling. Call it nurturing. Your choice.
When first signed to Arista, she "went through a ton of people," as Lavigne told me once in an interview. In the early days, she even once thought her record company was on the brink of giving up on her when they had trouble finding her niche. Eventually, it was a harder-edged sound that clicked, yet the Matrix was brought in to soften up the first album, or she might have pushed too far into Alanis Morissette territory. Label head Antonio (L.A.) Reid was closely involved and had an executive-producer credit on her 2002 debut Let Go.
This started a pattern of songwriters coming and going.
For the second album, 2004's Under My Skin, Kreviazuk came aboard in a big-sister role. Lavigne even lived with Kreviazuk and her husband Raine Maida in relative seclusion in their California home while recording the disc. This was back when Lavigne was referring to Kreviazuk as her new best friend, and when Kreviazuk was concentrating on her songwriting for other artists, a sideline to her solo career.
With the latest album, Dr. Luke similarly spent months with Lavigne working on songs. Yet Lavigne told me in an interview in April that unlike her past CDs, she had a much clearer idea about the album she wanted to record before she even began working on it.
As for the lawsuit, McBride is still mulling whether to settle out of court if the cost of defending the case simply proves too high. But you can easily imagine the light bulbs clicking over lawyers' heads when even the influential website All Music Guide notes a comparison between the chorus of the Rubinoos' I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and Lavigne's Girlfriend.
The Rubinoos' song is an earnest invitation, with the call-and-response "Hey hey, you you" acting as a back-to-innocence declaration, à la the Ramones and so many other bands in the late seventies. Girlfriend is the reverse, an aggressive playground challenge.
As Lavigne said when the song was released earlier this year, "I was having a few drinks with Luke when we wrote the chorus, and we were just totally goofing off. 'I don't like your girlfriend, I think you need a new one.' It's, like, what does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. We didn't put that much thought into it. We thought it was funny."
Trouble is, the result is then left for everyone else to analyze and fight over.