ASHLEE SIMPSON - SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE & LIP - SYNCH.
On October 24, 2004, Ashlee Simpson appeared on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE as a musical guest. As is customary for musical guests, Ashlee Simpson was scheduled to give two performances, the first of “Pieces of Me” and the second of “Autobiography.” As Ashlee Simpson was beginning the second performance, however, a recording of “Pieces of Me” - including vocals - started playing before she had raised the microphone to her mouth. Ashlee Simpson, uncertain of how to react, danced nervously (as she later called it, a “hoe-down”) and then left the stage. After an emergency commercial break, Ashlee Simpson appeared again during the show’s closing with the guest host Jude Law, and apologized, saying that her band had started playing the wrong song. Others, however, criticized Ashlee Simpson for what they saw as evidence that she was lip synching. She was also accused of lying to the public about her acid reflux disease.
Ashlee Simpson called in to the music video show Total Request Live on October 25, and explained that she had been having trouble with her vocal cords due to acid reflux and could not sing well, and thus had no choice but to perform with a guide track. For the second performance, Ashlee Simpson said that her drummer had hit the wrong button and consequently the wrong track played.
Prior to the incident, Ashlee Simpson expressed her distaste with lip synching in an interview with Lucky magazine: “I’m totally against it and offended by it. I’m going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I’d never lip-synch. It’s just not me.”
During the October 25 Radio Music Awards broadcast, Ashlee Simpson made fun of the SNL mistake by pretending at first to be caught in the same mistake with “Pieces of Me” as before, before going into a performance of “Autobiography.” On October 31, the CBS news program 60 Minutes aired footage from Simpson’s rehearsals before the SNL performance, in which she was shown having trouble with her voice and being visibly upset.