Reports of our deaths have been
Some music fans are convinced famous pop stars have died and been replaced by lookalikes to keep their image alive AVRIL LAVIGNE JADEN SMITH TAYLOR SWIFT ELVIS
IT STARTED with a car number plate and a pair of bare feet...
But celebrity conspiracy theories have come a long way since rumours first circulated of Paul McCartney’s demise following the mystery over the cover of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album in 1969.
This week, suggestions that pop singer Avril Lavigne died 14 years ago and was replaced by a clone or body double have been all over the internet.
The pop conspiracy craze began almost 50 years ago with rumours that legendary Beatle Paul had died in a car crash.
Since then, there have been generations of great celebrity theories – and with the advance of technology and the internet, it has only spiralled. The resurfacing of the Lavigne story is the ultimate exercise in self-repeating nonsense.
The original rumour was that the Canadian singer killed herself in 2003, upset over the death of her grandfather, and was replaced by evil record company executives by a double called Melissa.
This rumour was started in Brazil by a blogger, proving a point about how easy it was to start internet theories.
Ironically, it has been recycled recently. After he had been out of the limelight for a while between albums and tours, a radio phone-in suggested that Paul may have died.
With no internet and not much culture of celebrity conspiracy theorising at the time, the rumour grew arms and legs until Life magazine tracked Paul and his family down in the Mull of Kintyre and produced a feature headlined Paul Is Still With Us.
However, that didn’t stop the most hardy of paranoids and claims emerged that this was a fake – citing evidence on the cover of the Abbey Road album such as Paul’s shoeless appearance, his gait and a VW Beetle’s registration 28IF – referring to his apparent age if alive. A particuarly cruel internet viral hoax swarmed over Facebook in recent years suggesting that Will Smith’s son Jaden had killed himself.
It’s part of a self-perpetuating virus with a link to a farewell video message he is said to have recorded for his father – click on the link and the virus takes control of your account to repost the story to all your friends. In 2012, rumours circulated that Taylor had died in a car crash (the most common cause of conspiracy death apparently).
An artist in Melbourne has also painted a mural of her with the message “In Loving Memory of Taylor Swift: 1989 - 2016 RIP” as an apparently clever satire of the singer’s then spat with Kim and Kanye.
Another TS rumour is that she is a clone of satanist priestess Zeena LaVey. Since the king of rock ‘n’ roll died in 1977, theorists have suggested his death involved the CIA, black helicopters and the pressures of fame.