October 24, 2004

It's not pop music's finest moment

Last night: Saturday Night Live.

Musical guest: Ashlee Simpson.

She pulls a: Milli Vanilli.

Simpson had performed her hit single "Pieces of Me" without incident earlier in the show. When she came back a second time, her band started playing and the first lines of her singing "Pieces of Me" could be heard again. She looked momentarily confused as the band plowed ahead with the song and the vocal was quickly silenced. Simpson made some exaggerated hopping dance moves, then walked off the stage 35 seconds into the performance. NBC quickly cut to a commercial.

Pretty embarrassing to be, you know, exposed as a fraud, and all. But then, she makes it worse at the end of the show by blaming her band!

"I feel so bad. My band started playing the wrong song. I didn't know what to do so I thought I'd do a hoe-down."

Blech! The band had tried to cover and make the best of it by playing along with the wrong song; Simpson merely sulked off the stage, presumably in shame. If she has any left.

It's got to hurt to be the lesser of the two Simpson sisters anyway. With any luck, this will be the final nail in the fame coffin for Ashlee Simpson.

Anyway, it is imperative that I counter-balance this lip sync awfulness with some pop music goodness. As you probably know, I collect old radio broadcasts of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem. I trade CD-R copies of these shows with other collectors, and up until recently we had a trading post message board on the Internet(s) that allowed us to set up trades. That board went away recently, so I have decided to step up and fill the gap.

Presenting... (are you listening, Google?)... the official furdell.com American Top 40 Trading Post message board thingy.

Keep your feet on the ground, etc. etc. etc.

James - 6:26 PM
Comments

For some reason, Tivo is willing to record "The Best of Rachel Dratch" or whatever, but it won't get new episodes. Lame.

Andrew F - Oct 25, 2004 - 8:05 AM

What I don't get is whether this means she regularly lip synchs or was just doing so on SNL. If the latter, I'm not sure its so bad - performers seem to always sound their worst on SNL (I still think the White Stripes' first trip was abhorrent). Maybe they SHOULD just play a studio recording and, um, hoedown.

kk - Oct 25, 2004 - 9:30 AM

I remember Madonna once defended her use of lip syncing, saying that it's hard to sing when you're dancing all over a stage for a couple of hours or something. (But why wear the little microphone thingy?)

But, on SNL you only have to do two lousy songs. I mean, come on.

Anyway, SNL might actually be good if they stopped with the damned musical guests. Lame, lame, LAME.

Andrew F - Oct 25, 2004 - 10:18 AM

This has introduced a new phrase to me: She claims there were problems with her "vocal guide."

RM - Oct 26, 2004 - 1:52 AM