Ashlee Simpson is one of those terminally bubbly show-biz types who could sound chirpy talking about a nuclear holocaust. But her giddy-meter practically explodes when you mention her upcoming show in Dallas, where she grew up.
Associated Press
Ashlee Simpson says she is 'extremely happy' with her voice and is working with a vocal coach.
"It's just so amazing to come back and be like, 'Wow! This is where I come from. This is my roots!' " she says by phone from L.A. "I can't wait to come home and see my whole family!"At least at home with her family, she's safe from abuse.
Everywhere else, she's a cultural joke, the result of her Saturday Night Live lip-sync fiasco, followed by the booing of her halftime performance at the Orange Bowl and her general image as the least talented singer in pop music. Last year, when a petition was circulated to get her to stop singing, hundreds of thousands of people went online to sign it.
It's not easy being Ashlee Simpson – although, of course, you'll never get her to admit that.
The 21-year-old is a whirlwind of positivism throughout a 30-minute interview, peppering her sentences with "Wow!" or "Oh, gosh!" or some variation of the phrase "dream come true."
But what happens when dreams turn into nightmares?
Ms. Simpson sees a silver lining in that, too: The SNL incident taught her to ignore her skeptics and appreciate her young fans all the more.
"There's a huge demographic of people who enjoy my music and stick by my side. ... Not everybody has to like you," she says.
"It's OK to have flaws and mess up. My mom always raised us to be confident with who we are and to be comfortable in my skin."
Ms. Simpson grew up in Richardson, where her dad, Joe Simpson, was a youth minister at the Heights Baptist Church. While her big sister, Jessica, was trying to make it as a Christian singer, little Ashlee was training hard to be a dancer.
By age 11, she was good enough to enroll at the School of American Ballet in New York. But while she was there, she developed an eating disorder, a topic that, like everything else, she breezes through in a giggly voice.
"A lot of people think you need to look skinny or whatever, and for me, I was like, 'OK, I'm gonna be super-skinny,' but then when my mom saw me she said, 'I'm taking you to Outback Steakhouse, and you're gonna eat french fries and steak!' "
Ms. Simpson moved back home to Texas, where, between dance lessons, she dreamed of becoming a rock singer like Alanis Morissette. When Ms. Morissette came to Dallas in 1996, a heartbroken Ashlee stayed home while all her friends went to the show.
"My mom wouldn't let me go because Alanis said the F word," she explains.
But her parents did allow her to go to Lilith Fair, an event she describes as life-changing.
"When I saw Jewel and Joan Osborne, that was the moment where I was like, 'Wow! I would love to be like that one day.' My eyes were, like, so big and I was, like, 'That is so cool!' "
After Jessica jumped from Christian music to pop and signed with Columbia Records, the Simpsons moved to Los Angeles, where 14-year-old Ashlee tried her hand at acting and danced in her sister's live show.
But as Jessica's career exploded in the wake of her hit MTV reality series Newlyweds, Ashlee switched gears and followed big sis into singing. Her manager-dad landed her deals with Geffen Records and MTV, and The Ashlee Simpson Show whet the public's appetite for her July 2004 debut, Autobiography.
The CD was an unexpected hit, selling 400,000 copies in its first week on its way past the 4 million mark. The critics, however, weren't impressed with her scratchy voice or her music. Rolling Stone called her "soulless" and described the CD as "a mundane melange of Avril-ish brat pop and Sheryl Crow cod rock."
The SNL lip-syncing incident in late 2004 turned her into the piñata of pop music: "We, the undersigned, are disgusted with Ashlee Simpson's horrible singing and hereby ask her to stop," reads the Stop Ashlee campaign at www .petitiononline.com/StopAsh/.
Still, she kept going, launching a concert tour that was free of lip-syncing and backing tapes – although not free of trickery: Ms. Simpson spent most of her show at Nokia Theatre last year singing in unison with a dimly lighted female backup vocalist, a sleight of hand that gave fans the impression her voice was much stronger than it really was.
Today, Ms. Simpson defends her much-maligned pipes.
"I'm extremely happy with my voice right now," she says. "I like the tone of it, and I love, like, sometimes that I can have a little undertone of a, like, a bluesy-folky kind of thing."
She is also working on her R&B thing, training with a vocal coach and studying old Etta James and Aretha Franklin albums.
"It's fun to stretch your voice out," she says. "I'd love to do a rock kind of soul thing. That would be so cool. The sky's the limit."
Ashlee Simpson – soul singer? Now that's what we call optimism.
With opening act the Veronicas, Saturday at 7 p.m. at Smirnoff Music Centre, Fair Park. Gates open at 5:30 p.m. Ticketmaster. $28.75 to $48.75.
E-mail tchristensen@dallasnews.com
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