Remember when you heard that Jessica Simpson's little sister came around and declared she wasn't Jessica 2.0? She set out to prove it with her reality show,
The Ashlee Simpson Show, getting pierced, and, of course dying her hair black. She had no interest in producing bubblegum pop like her sister and used her debut album,
Autobiography, to further showcase the point. Her album, released in July 2004, started off strong with almost 400,000 units sold in it's first week.
Whether she rode on the coattails of Jessica's success and her and former brother-in-law Nick Lachey's newly minted status as America's Sweethearts due to their
Newlyweds show or on her own merit can be debated. However, it isn't to say she didn't get her own slice of the pie thanks to her work and marketing. However, that all came to a head on October 23, 2004.
Like many people, I happened to be watching Saturday Night Live that night. Her first performance went well. Everything went without a hitch. It was when it was time for her second performance that everything went to such a depth of second-hand embarrassment hell from which Ashlee has never been able to recover from completely. Some could even argue, she never did.
In case you missed it:
Yeah, it's still hard to watch. The jig did become somewhat iconic.
Cliff Notes on the reminder of the article:
- Ashlee blamed acid reflux. Lorne Michaels blamed Ashlee for deceiving the audience. Plenty of other publications and talking heads chipped in.
- Being booed at the Orange Bowl in 2005.
- I Am Me, her second album, sold a third of what her debut album did.
- Her third album, Bittersweet World, sold even less. Did y'all even know she had a third album? I didn't.
- The House of Simpson seemed to have had bad luck once her debut performance on SNL premiered. Her sister got divorced, so did her parents. Also, her dad got really creepy about her sister's breasts and was accused of being gay.
- Talks more of Jessica and her romances and the succeess of Newlyweds.
- Got involved with Pete Wentz and proceeded into a shotgun wedding. Divorced subsequently followed.
- Got together with Evan Ross and recently married. Not very many publications cared as much as Ashlee and Evan believed they would.
- Jessica went on to build a different empire for herself. Ashlee...well, good luck to her, I guess
Mods, this isn't the whole article and I've written with my own words what wasn't on the bullet list.
Source