Somebody goofed and, after the lip-synching went south, Ashlee Simpson wasn't about to take the blame. At first, anyway.
She faulted the band. Geffen Records, her label, pointed to a computer glitch. Her dad blamed a scratchy throat. Finally, Simpson admitted that the chance to perform before a national audience -- and really nail it -- was too precious to leave to chance.
In the end, though, the blame likely falls as much to the pressure to be perfect, to match the complex choreography of a video while performing live on stage. Which is why those who know show business may have felt embarrassed or sad for Simpson, but not surprised at the Saturday Night Live gaffe.
That night, as Simpson was poised to "sing" the title cut to her double-platinum debut, Autobiography, the vocals to a different song were heard, while Simpson held the microphone at her side. Caught off guard, the performer improvised a few odd dance steps, then left the stage as NBC cut to a commercial.
The Internet and radio airwaves went wild. The morning after the SNL faux-pas, Simpson's official Web site was inundated with thousands of posts, many of them mean-spirited. And, with Simpson scheduled to appear last night -- live -- on NBC's Radio Music Awards, there was little time for spin.
"When I saw the Ashlee Simpson thing, I felt bad for her because she can sing and she's a nice person," says Kid Kelly, senior director of pop programming at Sirius Satellite Radio. "I think it's being overblown. I think because she's young and didn't know what to do, it drew a lot of attention to it. The Irish jig portion made it look bizarre."
Simpson poked fun at herself at the awards show last night. As the band launched into the song "Autobiography," she stopped the band and told the house it was the wrong song. "Just kidding," she said after two beats. Then she ripped into a live version of the song.
So, what went wrong Saturday?
"I feel so bad. My band started playing the wrong song," Simpson told the SNL audience at the close of the show. She had performed her smash hit "Pieces of Me" earlier in the show without a hitch. It was the vocals from that song, heard by the audience, that gave her away.
Then her dad gave up the goods.
Joe Simpson, the singer's manager-father, said his daughter's voice was hoarse because of acid reflux disease. "Just like any artist in America, she has a backing track that she pushes so you don't have to hear her croak through a song on national television," he told Ryan Seacrest on Los Angeles radio station KIIS-FM.
