Why Ashlee Simpson knew ‘SNL’ lip-syncing blunder was ‘not going to go well’
She’s better off saying “No.”
Singer Ashlee Simpson got candid Monday after revealing that her infamous lip-syncing scandal on “Saturday Night Live” in 2004 taught her “the power of saying no.”
“I’ve never talked about or said, but it’s like the other thing is, learning as a woman, when you say no or as an artist or a human or whatever, that day I said, ‘I will not go on, I don’t care. I can’t speak,’ ” the former pop star said during her appearance on the “Broad Ideas With Rachel Bilson & Olivia Allen” podcast.
According to the “Boyfriend” songstress, she was scheduled to appear on the variety show as a musical guest but realized that she could not perform because she had “two nodules beating against each other,” causing her to lose her voice.
Simpson, 39, says she told the show’s execs what was happening but was pressured by the higher-ups to perform her hit song “Pieces of Me” anyway using a pre-recorded track.
“My band has never practiced this, this is not going to go well,” she recalled thinking. “I can’t do this.”
The “Nothing New” singer did end up performing the song without incident. Yet, when she went on to perform for a second time, a glitch occurred where the studio accidentally played the vocal track over, revealing the ruse.
Despite the track only playing for a few seconds, several viewers were quick to lambaste the singer.
According to Simpson, the entire ordeal taught her “the power of my no” and “the power of me saying absolutely not.”
“I feel like it was a humbling moment for me,” she continued. “I had the No. 1 song. It was, like, everything was about go, like, somewhere and then it was just, like, woah. The humility of not even understanding what grown-ass people would say about you, awful, awful things.”
The experience also served as a learning experience for Simpson to “tune out” the haters.
Simpson would later return to the show in 2005, fully healed. She performed two more of her hits, “Boyfriend” and “Catch Me When I Fall.”
Earlier in the podcast, Simpson revealed that she once rejected a purity ring her father attempted to give her.
“I think [when I was] younger, too, I would come off way more rebellious than I was,” Simpson ruminated. “Because I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m not doing that.’ ”
Simpson told viewers that she had watched how her parents treated her older sister, Jessica, and realized she didn’t want any part of it.
“I would see how my dad would be like, ‘You can’t talk to this guy.’ [Or like], ‘Here’s your ring to save yourself,’ ” “The Hot Chick” actress Simpson said, explaining that Joe Simpson, 66, tried to force a ring on her at age 12.
“I was like, ‘Oh, no, thank you. I will [not] be telling you when I am having sex,’ ” quipped Simpson before adding that, even without the ring, she still waited until she was 17 to have sex. “I always wanted it to be open that you don’t know what I’m doing.”
Read the full article Here