It happened to Milli Vanilli and ruined their careers, one of the scariest things that could ever happen live on-stage to a performer, a malfunction of the pre-recorded vocals. It happened, once again, during the most recent episode of \Saturday Night Live."" Was it a Halloween curse? No. Instead, it was bad talent at its finest, the perfect scare in the career of Miss Ashlee Simpson.
Simpson, the musical guest last Saturday, took the stage for her final song of the evening. The band started to play, and Simpson started a weird dance. Then, a faint vocal part started to accompany the musicians. But wait-Simpson wasn't singing. Instead, the pre-recorded vocals quickly faded as she looked surprised and confused trying to look to her bandmates for guidance that was not provided.
The camera panned back to a shocked and humiliated Ashlee, who held her useless mic, gave up and quickly exited the stage. The band remained cool and kept on playing proving their talent even though they, in the past, received no recognition (they were even disenfranchised from the name of the band). The camera focused on the seemingly well-rehearsed band for about 20 seconds and cut to commercial. Surprisingly, the band seemed to be having fun throughout the whole ordeal; maybe they were happy that they drove Simpson off the stage.
After the commercial break, ""SNL"" did not redo the song; redos do not exist on live television. The show finished with a few more skits and Jude Law hugging the mortified Simpson during the good-bye portion at the end of the show. Simpson apologized and had the nerve to blame the band for playing the wrong song. It is interesting that all of her band-mates were playing the wrong song in unison. Instead, Ashlee should have played the dumb card and said something along the lines of ""Well, I guess somebody can be dumber than my sister."" Later it was revealed that there was a malfunction in the music playing to back her up. Simpson's true lip-synching colors were revealed illustrating that she fails to have a strong singing voice.
While Simpson-bashing seems all too easy, the younger sibling had one thing to her advantage: she would actually sing live. But that quickly went awry when she realized her voice just wasn't powerful enough.
Live television finally did justice to this singer and self-claimed punk rocker. It seems people would have easily recognized her lack of talent on her show, but, MTV fooled its na??ve audience. Fortunately, it took ""SNL,"" which is a live medium separating amateurs from pros, to expose Simpson for her true worth. Both fans and haters can now see that this so-called punk rocker really is a pop star, and a sub-par pop star at that. If you are going to lip-synch, at least do it correctly. At least Britney Spears can perform heavily choreographed routines and still remember to correctly mouth the lyrics.
The mere fact that she lip-synchs should raise a red flag to all of her fans. While she claims she does not want to be a pop star, but a punk, then the first thing she should do is stop acting like a pop star. This SNL oops is proof that she is not as hard-core as she claims. Additionally, what ""punk"" would have a hair-stylist, use her mother to pick out her clothes and live in a posh apartment? Punks walk to their show with a bottle of Jack, sporting unwashed hair and wearing clothes from a thrift store which they slept in the night before. So, for true punk rockers, messing up the words during a performance would be normal drunk slacker behavior, they would most likely make something up, which would be creative and boost their careers. All Ashlee could do was step off her throne and swallow her pride and empty talent, which was easy to do since she wasn't even singing.
Will this ruin the music career of Ashlee Simpson? Probably not, but many fans will feel misled and alienated. Maybe Ashlee should step back into her shadow of deception; she received her attention and came into the limelight, but failed to live up to credible music standards. One thing is for sure, Ashlee, many people don't care about you, let alone your Autobiography anymore. So stop singing; oh wait, you already did.
Beth's column runs each Wednesday. You can contact her at eawick@wisc.edu
