Is Avril Lavigne — or Melissa — in the room with us now?
The Canadian rocker has addressed her complicated identity on the latest episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, reacting to a 21-year-old conspiracy theory that suggested Lavigne died in 2003 following the release of her 2002 debut album Let Go, and was replaced by a lookalike named Melissa.
“I mean, it’s just funny to me,” the 39-year-old told Cooper. “Like, on one end, everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, you look the exact same, you haven’t aged a day!’ Other people are like, ‘There’s a conspiracy theory that I’m not me.'”
Lavigne said “it could be worse” in the grand scheme of celebrity conspiracy theories, and didn’t find rumors about her death to be “negative or creepy” at all.
Cooper, however, disagreed.
“Avril, this conspiracy theory about you is a little creepy, come on,” Cooper said. But Lavigne replied: “I don’t know, it could be worse. Obviously I am me. It’s so dumb.”
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Avril Lavigne. CHRISTOPHER POLK/PENSKE MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES
As Cooper continued pressing Lavigne on the topic — even asking her at one point, “So, your name is Avril Lavigne?” — the singer-songwriter said she felt that the host might actually believe the rumors.
“I knew you half believed it!” Lavigne said, laughing.
“You haven’t aged, I’m staring at you,” Cooper said. “You literally look the same from when you were younger.”
Watch Avril Lavigne sing ‘Sk8er Boi’ with All Time Low in surprise return to When We Were Young
In a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lavigne had a similar reaction when asked about the theory.
“It’s just a dumb internet rumor and [I’m] flabbergasted that people bought into it. Isn’t that so weird? It’s so dumb,” Lavigne said at the time. “And I look the exact same. On one hand, everyone is like, ‘Oh my God, you look the same,’ and on the other hand people are like ‘Oh my God, she died.'”
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The “Girlfriend” performer has, in the past, spoken about her struggle to survive a bout with Lyme disease in 2015.
“It was that bad that night, and I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it.’ I think I was about to die because I had this weird feeling of, ‘Whoa. I feel like I’m on a cliff and I’m about to fall, and it’s dark,'” Lavigne told EW of a particularly serious incident prior to her official diagnosis with the disease, which inspired her 2019 album Head Above Water. “Coming out of it I felt like I was underwater drowning, coming up for air. That’s when I literally said, ‘God, help me keep my head above water,’ I wasn’t even thinking about music—it just happened.”
