Avril Lavigne was one of the big draws at Glastonbury this year, pulling in a huge crowd for her appearance on the festival’s Other Stage, but there is a possibility
there were some people in the audience who believed they weren’t watching Avril Lavigne at all. That’s because the pop-punk star is the subject of one of the most bonkers conspiracy theories on the internet. The long-running notion, which can be traced back to a 2011 Brazilian blog and has spawned a BBC podcast titled Who Replaced Avril Lavigne?, goes that the real Avril Lavigne died soon after the release of her 2002 debut Let Go and was replaced by a body double by the name of Melissa Vandella.
Recently, Lavigne appeared on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast and the two spoke about the long-running idea that Avril Lavigne is not, in fact, Avril Lavigne. “It’s just funny to me,” the Sk8ter Boi singer said. “On one end, everyone’s like, ‘You look the exact same, you haven’t aged a day’. But then other people are like, ‘There’s a conspiracy theory that I’m not me’.”
Sounding pretty confident that she was her, Lavigne said that out of all the conspiracy theories to be landed with, she was OK with the one she got. “Honestly, it’s not that bad, it could be worse. I feel like I got a good one,” she joked. When Cooper suggested that it must be a little creepy, she seemed nonplussed. “It could be worse. They’ve done that with other artists, I’m not the only one.”
It didn’t stop Cooper double-checking that Lavigne was who she said she was, though. “Your name is Avril Lavigne?” she says, to which Lavigne responds: “I knew you half-believed it!”
Which actually isn’t a firm denial, and probably exactly the sort of deflecting tactic that Melissa Vandella would use to move the conversation on. The mystery continues.
