For those who haven’t heard, the biggest laugh of last
week’s “Saturday Night Live” didn’t come
during a skit.
Ashlee Simpson’s second “performance” of the
night went awry. In a moment she’ll never be able to live
down, Jessica Simpson’s
so-introspective-she-has-fake-dark-hair sister stood on stage,
ready to perform introspective rock song No. 2,
“Autobiography,” when the vocals to introspective rock
song No. 1, “Pieces of Me,” began playing out of
nowhere. Confused, she coolly played it off with what initial
Associate Press reports can only describe as “some
exaggerated hopping dancing moves” before walking off stage
after half a minute.
People started bringing up the Milli Vanilli comparisons. Then,
Ashlee and her people went into a spin-control that should have the
Bush camp envious. At the end of the telecast, she blamed her band,
saying “my band started playing the wrong song.”
According to the same AP report, Geffen Records then stated that
instead of pre-taped electronic percussion, the actual recording of
“Pieces of Me” was played.
Those of us on the West Coast didn’t even get to see it.
NBC edited out Simpson’s voice for our feed, making it look
like she walked off because the band was playing the wrong song.
Later, the story was switched to blaming her severe acid-reflux and
then her father took the blame, saying he made the call to use a
backing track, but the drummer pushed the wrong button. And of
course, that this was the first time she had ever used a backing
track. Simpson then appeared on an interview with Katie Couric on
Tuesday morning. After being asked where she got “the little
hoe-down moves,” Simpson answered, “I don’t know.
From Texas. I freaked out. I freaked out and didn’t know what
to do. … I just kind of froze.”
Ironically, the director of the telecast was apparently Beth
McCarthy Miller, director of last year’s Super Bowl halftime
performance featuring Janet Jackson and the scariest nipple
piercing ever. Now, all we have to do is combine the two. Simpson
could hoe-down on stage to pre-recordings of “All For
You,” while Jackson shows off her own signature dance move.
It would be historic.
It’s only a matter of time, of course, before all of this
ends up on any number of list shows on E! and VH1. (Most Shocking
Embarrassing Best Kept Secret Moment of 2004 Ever: No. 37!)
It’s not like there’s any reality to the way she
sounds on record either, what with all the studio tricks at her
disposal. But this is probably a new nadir in the current trend for
singers in pop music that increasingly devalues, well, singing.
It’s no secret that image has become the No. 1 selling point,
but seriously, where have all the singers gone?
If you flash back about three or four decades, all you seem to
run into are great singers. Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, even Paul
McCartney had a great voice. Everyone except for Bob Dylan (he gets
a free pass for being, oh yeah, the greatest songwriter pop music
has known). What happened?
Take for instance, the current No. 1 single in the country,
Usher and Alicia Keys’ “My Boo.” The two are the
highest-selling R&B singers in a genre that focuses more on
vocals than any other genre at present. I’m not picking on
them here, as both produce top-notch singles. But neither are great
singers. Sure, they manage, and it’s cute that Alicia Keys
can be pretty and play the piano at the same time. This is
Usher’s fourth No. 1 song of the year. That hasn’t
happened in 34 years, since the Jackson 5 did it in 1970. No one
would call Michael Jackson a great singer, but at 12 he had more
chops than Usher.
So you can’t really blame Ashlee Simpson, or the music
industry, on this one. Until audiences actually demand real
singing, what do you expect?
Lee promises he didn’t lip-sync this column. E-mail
him at alee2@media.ucla.edu.