ASHLEE SIMPSON

Bethany Decker, a teenager in New York City has started a petition to put an end to Ashlee Simpsons career because she got fed up with the pop star.

“We, the undersigned, are disgusted with Ashlee Simpson’s horrible singing and hereby ask her to stop. Stop recording, touring, modeling and performing. We do not wish to see her again.” says the online petition.

Bethany Decker, an 18-year-old from Staten Island, New York, tells that she started the petition a few days after Simpson was booed at the Orange Bowl.

“My friend, Steve, called up after her performance to tell me how bad it was so I went online and got a clip. After chatting with a lot of people that just really wanted to express their anger, I decided that a petition might actually do something.” Bethany says.

Decker says that she and the many music fans who signed her petition feel that Ashlee Simpson should land record deals based on their artistic merit. She says, “I guess I did it, mostly because I’m just sick of record companies deciding who is popular… We want people who have talent. People who can sing, and don’t need their voices retouched for their CD. Artists whose CDs reflect how they actually sound.”

The Stop Ashlee Simpson petition–which is available at petitiononline.com–has been signed by almost 5,000 people since it launched on January 6. The petition is addressed to Simpson’s record label, Geffen/DGC Records and her management company, JT Simpson Entertainment.

Ashlee Simpson would wanted to have a clean slate start of 2005, but as her first appearance of the new year in Orange Bowl demonstrated, not everyone is as eager to put her “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE LIP-SYNCH” snafu behind her as Ashlee Simpson is. Imagine being booed in such a public forum as the Orange Bowl would be traumatic, but the singer/actress Ashlee Simpson insists she’s unfazed.

The Oklahoma Sooners and the University of Southern California Trojans battled for the national college football championship at the Orange Bowl. “There was some booing that went on after the halftime show was finished,” Ashlee Simpson said. “If they didn’t like the performance, and that’s what it was about, then sorry to them.” added Ashlee Simpson.

Some speculate Ashlee Simpson was booed at Miami’s Pro Player Stadium because the rowdy crowd of 72,000 wasn’t the same age bracket as Aslee Simpson’s teen audience.

La-La’s “I want to hear you scream!” is the reason for booing?

Another theory is it was payback for “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE LIP-SYNCH” for Ashlee Simpson being a bad sport, walking off the stage and later blaming her band for a miscue. Still others have complained that Ashlee Simpson just sounded bad. But Ashlee Simpson has a few theories herself about why boos were heard following the closing line of her song “La La,” “I want to hear you scream!”

“Maybe they were booing at me, maybe they were booing at the halftime show ’cause the whole thing sucked,” Ashlee Simpson said. Ashlee Simpson speculated that it was the Oklahoma Sooners fans booing her because a film clip of her rooting for USC was shown before her performance. “I was facing [the Oklahoma Sooners], and I was rooting for USC, and they played a clip of it, so maybe it was that those people didn’t like me. You never know. But I can’t make everybody happy.” Ashlee Simpson added.

Ashlee Simpson also pointed out that for this performance, the circumstances were less than ideal. “There were no ear monitors when we went onstage,”

“No floor monitors. And trying to sing in a stadium where you can’t hear yourself is kinda hard. My sister [Jessica Simpson] was like, ‘I don’t know how you just did that! I performed in stadiums, and if I didn’t have my ears, I would have freaked.’” Ashlee Simpson said.

Still, Ashlee Simpson said she’s learned a lot from both the “SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE LIP-SYNCH” and Orange Bowl ‘La-La’ booing experiences, with the biggest lesson being that she has to “keep pushing forward and being really strong, and no matter what you go through, fight through it.” After all, Ashlee Simpson said 2004 wasn’t all bad as her reality show was a hit, as was her debut album, Autobiography, which ended up being one of the top 10 best-selling albums of the year (2004).

“I go from having a #1 album and things going great and all of a sudden something like ‘SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE LIP-SYNCH’ happens and boom! You’re faced with how mean people can be and criticizing you and stuff,” Ashlee Simpson said.

Ashlee is learning!

“But I’ve learned a lot about myself through all of this. It’s like, I’m not perfect and I’m not going to be perfect. I’m still 20, and a new artist, and I will only grow. And I look forward to continuing to not listen to what one person says and making good music.” Ashlee Simpson added.

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.