Ashlee Simpson has been quietly making her way back into the media spectrum over the past year after being largely absent from it for over a decade. She has a new show coming out with her husband Evan Ross (Diana Ross’ son) called Ashlee+Evan that premieres on E! this Sunday.
The “Pieces of Me” songstress has been making the talk show rounds recently, hitting up the red carpets and getting herself ready for what looks to be a potential comeback. The question is though: does anyone really care about this?
I’ll be the first to admit that I was a fan of Ashlee’s back in the early 2000’s. I knew she was a product that her father was molding, but there was still this authenticity to her that rang true with a lot of younger girls and gay men at the time which is what made her so successful.
She emerged from a pack of artists who were sort of doing the same thing as her (Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan, Fefe Dobson) primarily due to her big MTV series that gave a major view into her personal life. The bubblegum pop era was still very strong at the time, thanks to the likes of her sister Jessica Simpson and many others, so the media saw her as the anti-type of those which rang in her favor. Because of this, she had a number one album on Billboard and several hits to go along with that.
Then the Saturday Night Live debacle happened, and the curtain closed so quickly on her career that it is still considered to be one of the biggest flubs to have ever happened on live television. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, Ashlee was the musical guest for SNL back in 2004 (Jude Law was the host). Her first performance was fine, and then the second one was a big disaster as she was caught lip-syncing on stage which eventually turned into her doing a severely awkward jig before walking off and her band finishing off the song.
It just got worse. Like way worse. She was largely booed during the halftime show at the 2005 Orange Bowl, her subsequent records totally flopped, and she basically faded into obscurity for several years after that minus a couple of efforts like the Melrose Place reboot that got canned very quickly.
When the SNL thing happened, Ashlee blamed everyone else but herself for the ordeal. Her father was the original “momager” that Kris Jenner eventually took over (or “dadager” in this case), and it only made the situation worse due to the media’s perception of him that he was creepy.
Lip syncing, although it happens all the time, can end or be very problematic for someone’s career (Milli Vanilli, Garth Brooks recently), as society doesn’t take lightly to it, but when you don’t take accountability for something you did that had that much of an impact on how your fans saw you, should we suddenly start to feel like we should care about your story all this time later?
For the most part, Ashlee has been spotted out over the past decade primarily with her hubby Evan and her children (one with him, one with ex Pete Wentz). Now, she’s decided to go back to the place that started it all for her: reality television.
To her credit, Ashlee has a major social media following and seems to be adored by many. The problem is if that will ever really translate to real life success, as you can boast that you have thousands of people double-tapping your stuff, but will they go further than that and purchase what you are trying to offer.
Her new show seems to be focused on Ashlee & Evan’s relationship, who are constantly scrutinized in the media over if they are staying together or not (looks like the former as of late). To me, this looks to be a too little, too late kind of ordeal for her.
Everyone loves a comeback, but when its been ten years with little to no effort involved publicly (Fergie is another example), then you must really wonder what’s the point in all of this when your first try left a lot of people with a sour taste in their mouths that they still haven’t gotten over. Time will tell though if this will lead to something much bigger for a star who fell harder than she ever really expected.
This was created by one of our Contributing Writers and does not reflect the opinion of Instinct Magazine or the other Contributing Writers when it comes to this subject.