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More than 20 years later, Ashlee Simpson has enough distance from her infamous Saturday Night Live musical debut.
Acknowledging that celebrity culture has “evolved” but “also hasn’t in some ways” since her lip-syncing controversy on the Oct. 23, 2004 episode of the NBC sketch comedy show, the Bittersweet World artist noted that “it’s a different era.”
“I don’t think if it was that moment in this era, it would be [like] that. I think during that time, I mean, the bullying was insane,” said Simpson on the Pod Meets World podcast.
Simpson’s musical guest appearance kicked off smoothly with a performance of her single ‘Pieces of Me’ from her debut album Autobiography, using a vocal track for support as she suffered vocal cord inflammation that day. As she and the band planned to perform the album’s title track for their second song, the recording for ‘Pieces of Me’ played again, causing instant confusion.
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“But then my whole life, I had to tell people, ‘Oh, but I perform every night,’” Simpson explained. “And I was like, what am I trying to tell people? My fans know. I had to know that in my heart.
Despite losing her voice during the appearance, “That doesn’t mean [I] didn’t write these songs,” she said.
“But I think it’s different now. For us, we had the magazines… Now everything’s kinda more fleeting,” added Simpson. “That was more like, ‘Here it is to be on your shoulders forever,’ you know? And I think now everything is, like, a little bit more fleeting and fast.”
Although the public reaction was brutal, SNL invited her back the following season, promoting her sophomore album I Am Me with the song ‘Catch Me When I Fall’, which was about the fallout from the lip-syncing incident.
