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Topic: Ashlee Simpson pulls a Milli Vanilli Return to archive Page: 1 2
October 25th, 2004 09:18 PM
kath aaarrrggghhhhhhhhh
recent. very recent.

big hits, then nuthin.....


arrrrggghhhhhhhh

attempts to chant mantra.....

fails.
October 25th, 2004 09:31 PM
M.O.W.A.T. Samantha Fox was hot!!!

Kath,

Maybe you're thinking Joan Osbourne??? She had that hit "What if god was one of us" and then nothing.
October 25th, 2004 11:31 PM
corgi37 No one, NO ONE, can ever say anything bad about the superb Samantha Fox. I had more pictures of her on my wall than i did of the Stones.

Mind you, they never looked as good topless as she did.

She's still pretty good for 38! Pity she's a dyke.
October 25th, 2004 11:33 PM
not bound to please (judge not until one peers through their own looking glass...)


Falling to "Pieces"
Ashlee Simpson's lip-synching drama on "SNL" exposed her as the concocted rocker chick we already knew she was.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Heather Havrilesky



Oct. 24, 2004 | It happened at the beginning of Ashlee Simpson's second musical performance on "Saturday Night Live." She and her band stood ready to perform the song "Autobiography" when suddenly, mysteriously, her vocal track from her hit song "Pieces of Me" -- which she had already "sung" earlier that evening -- began to play over the loudspeakers. Looking confused and embarrassed, Ashlee did a goofy jig for a few awkward moments, then smiled sheepishly to the audience. Then she slinked offstage. As her band continued to play "Pieces of Me," the guitarist and the bassist exchanging a knowing smirk, and then the show cut to a commercial.

And with one little recording mishap, young Ashlee cashed in whatever counterfeit street cred she and her handlers tried so hard to cultivate.



Law: Ladies and gentlemen, what can I say? Live TV!

Simpson: Exactly! I feel so bad! My band started playing the wrong song, and I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd do a hoe-down!

The normally rabid live audience reacted with stilted laughter as Ashlee crammed as many "Oops!" and "What can you do?" gestures as possible into her final few seconds on the air. That hapless little-sister, "Sure, I'm pathetic, but in a cute way!" shtick that made her MTV reality show, "The Ashlee Simpson Show," so popular, won her the devotion of scores of fans, and contributed to selling almost two million copies of her debut album, "Autobiography," now wore thin.

Of course, blaming her band and shrugging it all off as an adorable mishap didn't help, and Geffen Records didn't offer much assistance, either, blaming the snafu on a computer glitch, according to an AP report. The company claimed that, instead of pre-taped drums, the computer played a recording of "Pieces of Me." Not a bad excuse -- if they hadn't played a pared-down, raw-sounding vocal track, and not the normal recording.

Like it or not, plenty of pop performers use pre-recorded tracks, and since Simpson's performance on MTV's Music Video Awards in August was roundly criticized as unimpressive and off-key, it's probably not surprising that Ashlee and her handlers would opt to lip-synch. It's also not surprising that Ashlee isn't the best live performer around; after all, she's hardly performed before. MTV captured her first live performance ever at The Knitting Factory in L.A., replete with promotional fraudience swooning enthusiastically for the cameras. Far from the baby steps most performers take from open-mic nights to small venues, Ashlee was thrust, camera-ready, at age 19, into the drooling maw of the public, hardly given half a chance to come into her own as a songwriter, a performer, or a human being, really.

But just as Ashlee's career was formed in the exhaust of an overhyped publicity vehicle and fueled by a choreographed media dogpile, so might her career go down in flames befitting such a carelessly engineered persona. Hours after the SNL incident, several Websites dug up an interview in Lucky Magazine, where Ashlee professed her disdain for pre-recorded vocals.

Lucky: What are your takes on lip-synching?

Simpson: I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd never lip-synch. It's just not me.

Still, no matter how much Ashlee comes under fire for being a fraud -- as if her entire reality show weren't focused on the blatant, unapologetic fabrication of pop celebrity -- Ashlee herself is too young and naive to be held accountable for the countless errors in judgment that have been made in handling her career. While her father/manager Joe Simpson has been described by the New York Times as a tenacious entrepreneur, you have to question the wisdom of a man who, having transformed his eldest daughter, Jessica, from second-string pop star into reality TV guinea pig and pop cultural punchline, would set his sites on squeezing his more sensitive, emotional daughter into the same celebrity mold. No matter how many times we saw Ashlee stomping her feet and insisting on doing things her way on her show -- which mostly boiled down to which shade of chestnut to dye her blonde hair -- it was always clear that she was a helpless pawn in someone else's intensely profitable game.

Ultimately, her show was a close-up glimpse of Pop Star Day Care. Ashlee was shepherded around town, meeting with the hit songwriters the label hired that week, showing up at her first crowded gig looking petrified, being coached by her sister on how to handle the attention. Maybe, given her sister's trajectory, it seemed perfectly natural to Ashlee and her father that she should launch her career while cameras followed her every move. But who convinced her that it was a good idea to lip-synch?

In a recent New York Times profile of Joe Simpson, Geffen's president Jordan Schur offers some insight into the unmaking of Ashlee Simpson "[W]hen I was arguing with Ashlee and I was firing her producers, and she was crying, 'Dad I'm so upset, do something,' any other manager -- forget father -- would have jumped in," reported Schur. "Joe sat there and didn't open his mouth. He said, 'Listen to Jordan.'"

So what happens to Ashlee now? Given the degree to which most artists are invented by label executives and handlers, given the fact that we've seen this process in slow motion on show's like Ashlee's and Jessica's and "The Making of the Band," why would anyone object to getting a small peek behind the curtain?

Because the public is fickle. Just as her invention as a pop diva captured its imagination, insuring that her album debuted at No. 1 while her sloppily-crafted pop-star self was still half-formed, so will they turn on her for being the fabricated, marketed, propped-up self that they knew she was from the start.

But the real victim is Ashlee, who day in and day out races from one event to the next trying desperately to play her part as an alternative rocker who's actually just a regular, mainstream teenager, as a savvy businesswoman who really doesn't seem to have much say in her career at all, and as a seasoned performer who's actually inexperienced and ill-prepared. As ridiculous as Ashlee might look up there, shrugging and smiling apologetically, it's the puppet master holding her strings who really deserves to be strung up.


salon.com
October 26th, 2004 12:31 AM
gypsy Wait. So, when in trouble, blame it on acid reflux? Okay.
I was thinking she should go the Dixie Chicks route and pose nude on the cover of a magazine.
October 26th, 2004 12:48 AM
kath this girl took a lot of flack about it...damn it's right on the tip of my brain and i can't squirt it out....

help meeeee!!!!!
October 26th, 2004 12:56 AM
kath no really, it's making me crazy.....i can't even think of a song she sang..or anything....

should have "quit" drugs a lot sooner, i guess.....
October 26th, 2004 12:59 AM
Soldatti Here are the new stars, Ashlee Simpson, Paris Hilton and all that kind of idiots.
October 26th, 2004 01:00 AM
Prodigal Son Need clues! Teen pop singer? Not a teen? It's not Natalie Imbruglia is it? It's a pretty vague memory.
October 26th, 2004 01:20 AM
Bloozehound was it Sexy Spice aka Geri Halliwell ?

or maybe scary Spice aka Melanie Brown
October 26th, 2004 01:27 AM
gypsy Thanks, kath. I was folding laundry, and all I kept thinking about was "Who in the fuck is kath thinking of?" I must find out.
Do you remember what she looked/looks like? Age group? How long ago was it?
Throw us a bone here, kath.

Remember Marianne's SNL debacle? Y'know--when someone gave her procaine instead of cocaine, and her vocal chords froze up? At least Marianne stayed out there and tried to sing.
[Edited by gypsy]
October 26th, 2004 08:14 AM
Monkeytonkman Come on now, It's not like the stones have never mimed before.

look at Zeppelin, the Who etc. There's clips of them miming on great shows like the Old Grey Whistle Test.

Nearly every act out there has had to mime at some point in there career, this time it just came and bit this bird - whoever the fuck she is, on the arse.
October 26th, 2004 08:47 AM
LadyJane Anyone catch the Radio Music Awards last night?

Destiny's Child...DEFINITELY lip synching. Sure they look hot, but when the words coming out of those pretty mouths don't match what's on the speaker, I get aggravated.

I give Ashlee credit for going out there. She did sing live. She wasn't awful....but again the whole pop music biz really sucks.

Only act that impressed me was Gretchen Wilson. Say what you will about Country music...that chick was belting out the tune!

LJ.
October 26th, 2004 11:03 AM
Gimme Shelter She should do porn.
October 26th, 2004 11:12 AM
telecaster
quote:
kath wrote:
what was the name of that girl pop singer who had a couple mega hits and never appeared again?? i can't think of it..anyway, she will have some company soon.....



Was it Michael Bolton?

Kenny G?

October 26th, 2004 07:23 PM
Bloozehound J.Lo ?
October 26th, 2004 09:14 PM
mickjaggersgrl
quote:
LadyJane wrote:
Anyone catch the Radio Music Awards last night?

Destiny's Child...DEFINITELY lip synching. Sure they look hot, but when the words coming out of those pretty mouths don't match what's on the speaker, I get aggravated.

I give Ashlee credit for going out there. She did sing live. She wasn't awful....but again the whole pop music biz really sucks.

Only act that impressed me was Gretchen Wilson. Say what you will about Country music...that chick was belting out the tune!

ashlee didnt sound that good live at all, i liked it better when she lip synced lol

LJ.

October 26th, 2004 09:34 PM
LadyJane And your point????

LJ.
October 26th, 2004 10:39 PM
kath she was in the same wave as j lo and britney i guess...i cannot think of a thing she did (which may explain why she disappeared)..but yeah, she was a girl singer, young but not pre-pubescent or anything. and she announced she wasn't ever going to sing again and everybody seemed mildly pleased to hear it. them's that cared, i guess. but she made a big announcement that she was giving up.
October 26th, 2004 10:58 PM
corgi37 Well, i've been racking my brains too and cant figure out who you mean. Not that i pay much attention to teen pop music icons (except the sexy ones).

If this girlie announced she was quitting, what was she then going to do?
October 26th, 2004 11:01 PM
kath exactly!!!

i have no idea!!!

gettin' old is a beeeeeyach!!!
October 26th, 2004 11:02 PM
sirmoonie Mariah Carey
October 26th, 2004 11:14 PM
kath YESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and believe it or not i had just thought of it when your post came up!!!

mariah carey, bless her heart.

in a league of her own.

well, until now......

thank you everybody!!!! i can sleep tonight!! ( i hate it when shit like tht keeps me awake all night....)
October 26th, 2004 11:16 PM
Trey Krimsin Ahh, Mariah was another singer who made my ears bleed.
October 27th, 2004 12:50 PM
jb Apparently she performed live last night and was fantastic!!! Lets give this girl a chance as even the Stones use musical enhancment these days(see intros to SFD and GS)....she is exactly what rock music needed right now- a fresh , young face, who we all can identify with.
October 27th, 2004 04:00 PM
gypsy I admire your unwavering support of teenage girls, jb.
October 27th, 2004 06:17 PM
mickjaggersgrl
quote:
jb wrote:
Apparently she performed live last night and was fantastic!!! Lets give this girl a chance as even the Stones use musical enhancment these days(see intros to SFD and GS)....she is exactly what rock music needed right now- a fresh , young face, who we all can identify with.



but her music is a little corny
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