Comprehensive information and links about Ashlee Simpson

Ashlee Simpson (born October 3, 1984Ashlee Simpson is an American pop rock singer and songwriter and an occasional actress. She is the younger sister of pop singer Jessica Simpson.

Simpson rose to prominence in mid-2004 through the success of her number-one debut album . Simpson received widespread derision when she used a pre-recorded vocal track for a performance on in October 2004. (Simpson said she needed a backing track because she was suffering from acid reflux, but her account has been disputed.) Following a North American concert tour and an unsuccessful film appearance, Simpson released a second number-one album,

Early life

Born and raised in Richardson, Texas (a suburb of Dallas), Ashlee is the daughter of Joe Truett Simpson (a former Baptist youth minister who is now her manager) and Tina Ann Drew (a former Sunday School teacher who homeschooled Ashlee). An accomplished dancer, Simpson began studying classical ballet at the age of three, and was admitted to the School of American Ballet in New York City at the age of eleven. Around that time, she suffered from anorexia nervosa; the condition lasted about six months, and she dropped to about 70 pounds (at 5'2"). After her sister Jessica landed a record deal, the Simpson family decided to move to Los Angeles, California, where Ashlee began appearing in television commercials.span When Jessica became a star after releasing her first album, Ashlee became one of her backup dancers. Later, she began appearing in films and television series, including an episode of the sitcom , was released in the U.S. on July 20, 2004 and debuted at number one with first week sales numbering around 398,000 copies. The album was certified triple platinum in September 2004. Critical reviews were mixed, with the online review collection site Metacritic giving the album fifty-five out of one-hundred points.span The single that preceded the album, "Pieces of Me," was one of the biggest hits of the summer in the U.S. and sold well elsewhere. However, the follow-up singles "Shadow" and "La La" were less successful.

"Early episodes of The Ashlee Simpson Show showed Simpson's natural blonde hair before it was dyed dark brown to promote her debut album." , a reality show about the married life of Jessica and her then-husband Nick Lachey. To accompany the beginning of her own music career, she got her own MTV reality show entitled . It ran in the U.S. for eight weekly episodes over the summer of 2004, and a second season of ten episodes aired from January to March 2005. The show dealt with the process of writing, recording, and performing Simpson's music as well as aspects of her personal life.

When appearing for live performances, Simpson performed live with a backing band consisting of Ray Brady (guitar), Braxton Olita (guitar), Joey Kaimana (bass guitar—from 2004 to 2005 Zach Kennedy filled this role), Chris James (keyboards and vocals—from late 2004 to 2005 Lucy Walsh filled this role), and Chris Fox (drums). In September 2004, Simpson announced on her website that the band would be named "Ashlee Simpson and Submission," taking the name from the fact that they had received so many submissions of proposals for the name.

In addition to her own first album, Simpson sang "Christmas Past, Present, and Future" on the 2004 holiday album In 2004 Simpson received the "Song of the Summer" Teen Choice Award for "Pieces of Me," as well as the "Fresh Face" award. In addition, she also won a Billboard Award for New Female Artist of the Year in December and was later named along with Regis Philbin (in Dick Clark's absence) at the end of the year, hosting the West Coast portion of the show and performing three songs.

24, 2004 episode, and as is customary for the show's format, she was scheduled to perform two songs. Her first song, "Pieces of Me", was performed without problems. However, when she began her second song, "Autobiography", the song "Pieces of Me" was heard again—including her vocals—before she had raised the microphone to her mouth. Simpson began to dance spasmodically and then left the stage.span During the closing of the show Simpson appeared with the guest host Jude Law stating that her band performed the wrong song in the opening on the performance. Others, however, criticized her for what they saw as evidence that she was lip synching.

"Simpson during a rehearsal for her controversial Saturday Night Live appearance in 2004. She is seen in distress due to vocal difficulties." and explained that due to complications arising from a "severe" variation of acid reflux (which had previously been seen in ) she had completely lost her voice and her doctor had advised her not to sing. She claimed that because of the acid reflux, her father required her to use a guide track for the performance. She said of the incident, "I made a complete fool of myself." According to Simpson, the drummer hit the wrong button, which caused the wrong track to be played.span During the October 25 Radio Music Awards broadcast, Simpson pretended, as a joke, to make the same mistake as she did in the incident, but then began to perform "Autobiography" without using a pre-recorded vocal track as she had done during the prior performance, in which she was portrayed as having trouble with her voice and seemed visibly upset.

Early 2005

On January 4, 2005, Simpson performed "La La" at the halftime show for the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida; when her performance finished, many of the 72,000-plus spectators booed. Representatives for the Orange Bowl stated that they were pleased with her performance and felt that it was a belated reaction to the incident, while others have speculated that it may have been because the audience of the Orange Bowl was outside of Simpson's target age bracket. Still others disagree, however, and assert that her performance was poor and very off-key.span

Following her Orange Bowl performance, an Internet petition at PetitionOnline.com complaining about Simpson's singing was among the most active of the site's petitions.span

Simpson's first U.S. headlining tour (with two dates in Canada as well) ran from mid-February to late April 2005. The opening acts for the tour were Pepper's Ghost and The Click Five.span songs, Simpson also performed three cover songs, The Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket", Blondie's "Call Me", and Madonna's "Burning Up" along with Simpson's own unreleased song "Hollywood". She said that the tour would be "stripped down", without pyrotechnics, and that "it's going to be me and my band getting out there and having fun".span In March 2005, Simpson stated that she would like to incorporate the feel of music from the 1980s on her second album, and that the album would focus less on relationships and more on herself. She also said that she wanted to do another television show, but that ), an independent film that was released in theaters in August 2005. Simpson filmed her scenes in late 2004. While Simpson's performance was met with acceptable reviews,span , was released in the U.S. on October 18, 2005 and debuted at number one with roughly 220,000 copies sold.span Its first single, "Boyfriend", impacted radio in early September 2005 and quickly became another major hit for Simpson, reaching the top twenty on the Billboard Hot 100. Simpson began a concert tour on September 21 in Portland, Oregon and appeared on several television programs to promote the album, including the October 8, 2005 episode of . The first of Simpson's two performances on the show was of the ballad "Catch Me When I Fall", which was written about her previous experience. Simpson thanked the crowd – who responded positively to both songs – after her second performance. In mid-December, Simpson collapsed after performing in Japan, possibly due to exhaustion. She was briefly hospitalized, and consequently did not perform as scheduled at the Radio Music Awards on December 19.span was "L.O.V.E." It charted on the Hot 100 prior to its official release and has since reached the top forty. It has also been remixed by R

Image and personal life

Simpson has a decidedly different image from that of her sister. Previously blonde like Jessica, she dyed her hair dark during the recording of the MTV reality show after she finished filming for the television series, although after a year with dark hair she returned to blonde in 2005. Simpson's songs also have rock elements absent from her sister's music, and Simpson often wears shirts with "punk"- designs, sometimes emblazoned with band names. She typically has her fingernails and toenails painted black, and has three tattoos: a star on one wrist, two cherries on her ankle, and the word "love" on her other wrist.span

Her vocals, while generally not thought to equal her sister's range, have been praised by some as fitting the of her music, and are usually described as "raspy" or "throaty". Simpson and her sister were tied for third on oft-quoted celebrity-fashion critic Mr. Blackwell's list of the worst-dressed celebrities of 2004. Blackwell wrote that "from gaudy to grim to downright frenetic these two prove that bad taste is positively genetic".

She has refused to discuss her sex life, in contrast with her sister, who openly stated her intention to practice sexual abstinence until marriage. "I decided that I didn't want to talk about that because it's super personal", Simpson said of the situation.span Simpson's relationship with actor Josh Henderson lasted for nearly two years and ended during the first episode of . Soon after, she began dating fellow musician Ryan Cabrera. That relationship was also featured on the show, and Simpson appeared as Cabrera's love interest in the music video for his song "On the Way Down". The two were reported to have split in August 2004 due to their hectic schedules, but they resumed their relationship for a while afterward, before ending it again in early 2005; Simpson says they are still friends, however. In February 2006, she told magazine that she's dating bandmate Braxton Olita and went on a 10-day vacation with him to Hawaii.span

In 2005, rumors began circulating that Simpson had stolen Wilmer Valderrama from Lindsay Lohan. Simpson's single "Boyfriend" was reported to be about the situation, but she said that the song "is about [how] every girl out there sometimes thinks you stole her boyfriend. It's just making fun of that".span Later that year, rumours arose that Simpson was secretly dating another Joe Simpson-managed actor, 's Chris Raab (Raab Himself).

In November 2005, eTalk Daily broadcast a video of a late-night visit made by Simpson to a McDonald's fast-food restaurant in Toronto, Canada. Simpson appeared to be intoxicated in the video, and verbally assaulted a member of the staff, as well as another customer. Simpson later said that the customer, who was seen in the video asking her for an autograph, had first called her "gross" before he had realized who she was.span

Criticism

There have been arguments that Simpson is a "manufactured" artist with little singing talent. People cite incidents like the episode and the Orange Bowl performance as proof of their claims, while others consider Simpson's image (instead of her music) to be the reason for her continued success. Critics also point out that because she is Jessica Simpson's sister, she had an unfair advantage in acquiring a record deal.

Some speculate that Simpson was pushed to fame through the aggressive management of her father, Joe Simpson, who is her manager and was the executive producer of her reality show. Others think that Simpson has lip-synched on occasions other than the incident to the 1990 Milli Vanilli incident in which their guide track skipped during a live MTV performance, revealing that they were lip-synching.span Simpson had performed live numerous times before the incident, and has since.

In early 2005, Simpson's marketing campaign was accused of astroturfing by users on several websites. A post on Metafilter claimed that the marketing company posted the same text, which contained the text, "I just read about Ashlee in us weekly. Those guys at the football game were total jerks." (the "football game" referring to the Orange Bowl incident) under the user name "mandyc19" on over three hundred different music-related forums in order to further promote Simpson and paint her in a positive light.span This (and possibly other instances) led to a new term, "Ashleeturfing", to describe faux fan raves such as this.span

In January 2006, Simpson was nominated for a Razzie Award for "Worst Supporting Actress" for her role in and thus might not be reliable. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please check for inaccuracies and modify as needed, 2005: "Boyfriend" — #19 U.S., #15 CAN, #12 UK, #8 AUS; certifications: gold (AUS), platinum (U.S.) Although the minimum age for admission was technically 12, Joe Simpson said that he lied about his daughter's age to get her into the school in an October 2004 interview. (Leeds, Jeff. Ashlee Simpson Celebrates Her New Album With A Tattoo - Softpedia. URL accessed on September 4, 2005.