Ashlee Simpson got exposed as a lip-synching fraud on Saturday Night Live. Don't say I didn't warn you. When her album debuted at number one in August, I wondered on this site whether Americans had been "lobotomized."
Ashlee Vanilli is a fitting symbol of the recording industry in 2004. She offers visual over audio, marketing over product, and style over substance. If you get past her good looks and manufactured "attitude," you quickly realize: oh yeah, this is really dreadful.
Saturday Night Live deserves our scorn for perpetrating a fraud. But they at least partially redeemed themselves by not allowing a retake. If Jimmy Fallon doesn't get a do-over when Christopher Walken demands "more cowbell," why should Ashlee Simpson get a second opportunity to cue the right cassette?
The music industry has forgotten that it's a music industry. Seriously, there is some question in my mind whether the overweight Aretha Franklin, the hideously ugly Rolling Stones, or the weirdly experimental Jimi Hendrix would get a record contract nowadays. Who knows what talent the public is being denied. We do know what "talent" we are being offered.
Pop music has always been about artifice and performance over talent. It is neither new nor surprising that an act lip synchs; this is not one of those cases in which the halcyon days of yore can be yearned for. Every year has seen its pop debacles. To which one can easily rejoin, every year has seen its share of talented performers who actually sing. The death knell of culture has been sounding for years and yet it still manages to function.
Take Simpson for what she is: a flash in the pan, a performer who's flame burns quicker than the high from the lines of coke she probably snorts.
Projecting onto her artifice any more substance than this is to imbue her with an importance and significance utterly disproportionate to that which she deserves.
Dave- A. Simpson doesnt snort coke...but she probably should.(it would inhance her bad-girl image and might activate some cells in her brain.)
I take it then that you have firsthand experience with Simpson? Please do tell!
Do people actually find her attractive? I think she is very plain looking. Her older sister is gorgeous (assuming she is all real) but I think she has been manufactured as a pop star more as a form of nepotism than anything else.
Don't know what she looks like but her songs have all the substance of an amoeba.
Plus Jessica tells us everything is real. She must be telling the truth, right? Cause celebrity has no artifice, right?
Ashlee Simpson made a career out of perkiness, anyway. In my opinion, she does not have a good singing voice. I also believe that she is not that good of an actor, either.
Jimmy Fallon sucks.
You have to remember that style has always trumped substance in the pop music industry. Even a band as revered and successful as The Beatles owes a tremendous debt to the savvy marketing of Brian Epstein and the group's long-time PR man, Derek Taylor.
1) I genuinely do not like the singing voices of either of the Sisters Simpson. Ashlee's voice is nasal and Jessica likes to "overpower" notes for dramatic effect. That's why I will never buy their albums or go to their concerts. This is merely my opinion and I do not present this as absolute fact.
2) That being said, if you like the Sisters Simpson I won't stop you from buying their CD's or attending their concerts.
3) I actually think Ashlee Simpson is an attractive girl. However, Jessica gets more attention because of her huge... tracks of land.
