The band is actually live, and trying to salvage the fuck-up, but she can't do anything without being told to, so she ditches.

yup, that's exactly it. she had no idea how to get back into the song after the screw up.

blame it on the band, blame it on a computer glitch, blame it on... acid reflux?

-Tom

i would just like to point out something that irks me a little. there are more than one media sources saying "this will go down as one of the big SNL screw-ups like elvis costello or sinead o'conner."

and i totally disagree with that! elvis and sinead - what they did were artistic statements that were planned. elvis didn't forget the words and launch into some other song, and sinead didn't trip and tear her favourite picture of the pope. those were planned rebillious moves.

this was just... she fucked up. plain and simple. this media darling couldn't hold it together for even a whole ten seconds and was exposed as the fake she is. she screwed up!! her dad was all defensive, but he's just getting that way because that's his investment, and he's gonna lose money if he doens't try to save some face.

but he's creepy so it doesn't matter...

josh

blame it on the band, blame it on a computer glitch, blame it on... acid reflux?

It's funny, because after my first post here I read about the reflux excuse, and suddenly a lot more made sense. Let me explain, because I've had acid reflux over for 3 years now and know exactly what they're talking about. I used to sing in a band up until about 2 years ago, and then quit because.....

and this is not supposed to be a sob story, just educational...

I had been experiencing acid indigestion for about a year before my official diagnosis, after which i started taking nexium (the purple pill). I went to an ear/nose/throat doctor for what seemed like unrelated symptoms at the time (about 2 years ago)....these symptoms included difficulty swallowing and coughing up loads of multi-colored blood spattered mucus. The doctor's first question was "do you ever have indigestion?"....well, he stuck a scope up my nose and down my throat to find that i had a swollen/irritated/possibly bleeding larynx. yay. This is caused by acid burning the esophagus all the way up into the larynx, swelling the larynx, affecting the vocal chords and giving a sensation of having something "lodged" in your throat. The doctor's recommendation was to keep taking nexium (which i have been taking for almost 2 1/2 fucking years now) and to take a 7 day cortisone regimen, which could have side effects ranging from internal/rectal bleeding to insomnia. I decided to let nexium take its course to ultimately fix the problem and steer clear of the cortisone. Besides, the cortisone is only a temporary solution and will not permanently fix anything. To this day I still have this sensation, and spend a lot of my meal time over the sink trying to cough up Lord knows what.

Now I don't know if this is what Ashlee Simpson deals with, but if it is, I will tell you that it is motherfucking torture. Noone should have to deal with this, and my wife and I pray almost daily that I won't have to much longer. Only in the past several months have I started singing again, and even then it is a total and complete pain in the ass to do so.

I guess I'm writing this in part because a lot of people won't understand the "acid reflux" explanation...nor do they understand the complications of reflux. The medical/Pharmaceutical communities milk this disease for all its worth.....you know, if you ever have heartburn, oh, it must be acid reflux. And if you buy this pill, it'll all go away. That's all complete bull, and this is a serious problem. So if ms. snl-screw-up or anyone has this problem, don't make light of it....cause it really sucks.

Acid reflux?

How was she able to "sing" 2 days later at the Whateverthefuck Video Awards?

according to the article that tgavin posted, they gave her a cortisone shot before the awards. whatever, its not like i know her personally or defend her idiot remarks against her band. i just know acid reflux is a bitch.

i may or may not be ashamed to admit i have done a little research into the totality of this incident. from what i have surmised:

she was a tool for blaming it on her band, but she was correct in saying that her band played the wrong song. watching the video makes this painfully clear. the way her seemingly-neurotic dad explained it in a radio interview following the incident, there *were* pre-recorded tracks being executed by a computer, including a vocal "guide" track that was only supposed to be used to reinforce her voice which was really weak and hoarse due to the acid reflux thing. this is no big deal and is nothing new. the drummer is playing to a click, the computer is putting in the little crap that the band can't do live (a 4-piece backing band can't do anyways). this is normal. what her dad says, and it looks to be true, is that the drummer was the one responsible for advancing the computer from the first song to the second song. what he did was, in his adolescent nervousness, he just hit the play button without telling the computer to move to the next song. her dad said that after the song, he was looking for the drummer (who he says is the most serious and hard-working guy in the band, and who he says will *NOT* be fired, because he's a great kid and he made a mistake and we all make mistakes) and couldn't find him, the kid was so freaked out by what he had done that he basically ran away. this is consistent with the way the guitar player on the left was looking at him like, "uh, WTF?" when the song started, and ashlee looks at him a little, too, though she seems largely unfazed until the vocal track comes in.

so i don't really have any doubt that it was this kid's honest mistake. ashlee fucked up by violating the "the show must go on" axiom. she fucked it up worse by immediately blaming it on her band, even if it was one of their fuckup. i think she wasn't talking about a person, but rather in her mind "my band" is the term she uses to describe the machine that allows her to get on stage and have something to sing to. like she just sees "the band" as a device that makes there be music. so i guess i can see how she didn't think she was stabbing anybody in the back, but rather was just giving an honest explanation from her perspective of what had gone wrong. "her band" played the wrong song. which is obviously true.

she is so much more famous because of this incident than she ever could have been without it. this story has been all over the internet and all over the news, bigtime. she just needs to make it work in her favor. and this could be a big eye-opener for all the misguided, non-musical folks out there who don't know how to tell if someone is lip-synching just by looking and listening. the idea that this is such a big deal because so many people are so unable to tell just by watching, it kinda freaks me out a little. how can you not tell?

and BTW, the stupid-ass comment on her website that are supposedly attributed to her, some of them may be legitimately hers, but some are probably not. if you click on her profile where it lists her as a moderator or a host or whatever it calls it, and look at her picture and her interests, it's painfully obvious that her site really was hacked, as has been claimed.

this all really sucks for her. while she is a corporate-pop piece of crap musician, one thing that remains true is that she's just a kid. it's really easy for me to have some schadenfreude here, but also i feel pretty bad for her as a human being.

scott-

you just wrote this much:

toomanyhelicopters wrote:i may or may not be ashamed to admit i have done a little research into the totality of this incident. from what i have surmised:

she was a tool for blaming it on her band, but she was correct in saying that her band played the wrong song. watching the video makes this painfully clear. the way her seemingly-neurotic dad explained it in a radio interview following the incident, there *were* pre-recorded tracks being executed by a computer, including a vocal "guide" track that was only supposed to be used to reinforce her voice which was really weak and hoarse due to the acid reflux thing. this is no big deal and is nothing new. the drummer is playing to a click, the computer is putting in the little crap that the band can't do live (a 4-piece backing band can't do anyways). this is normal. what her dad says, and it looks to be true, is that the drummer was the one responsible for advancing the computer from the first song to the second song. what he did was, in his adolescent nervousness, he just hit the play button without telling the computer to move to the next song. her dad said that after the song, he was looking for the drummer (who he says is the most serious and hard-working guy in the band, and who he says will *NOT* be fired, because he's a great kid and he made a mistake and we all make mistakes) and couldn't find him, the kid was so freaked out by what he had done that he basically ran away. this is consistent with the way the guitar player on the left was looking at him like, "uh, WTF?" when the song started, and ashlee looks at him a little, too, though she seems largely unfazed until the vocal track comes in.

so i don't really have any doubt that it was this kid's honest mistake. ashlee fucked up by violating the "the show must go on" axiom. she fucked it up worse by immediately blaming it on her band, even if it was one of their fuckup. i think she wasn't talking about a person, but rather in her mind "my band" is the term she uses to describe the machine that allows her to get on stage and have something to sing to. like she just sees "the band" as a device that makes there be music. so i guess i can see how she didn't think she was stabbing anybody in the back, but rather was just giving an honest explanation from her perspective of what had gone wrong. "her band" played the wrong song. which is obviously true.

she is so much more famous because of this incident than she ever could have been without it. this story has been all over the internet and all over the news, bigtime. she just needs to make it work in her favor. and this could be a big eye-opener for all the misguided, non-musical folks out there who don't know how to tell if someone is lip-synching just by looking and listening. the idea that this is such a big deal because so many people are so unable to tell just by watching, it kinda freaks me out a little. how can you not tell?

and BTW, the stupid-ass comment on her website that are supposedly attributed to her, some of them may be legitimately hers, but some are probably not. if you click on her profile where it lists her as a moderator or a host or whatever it calls it, and look at her picture and her interests, it's painfully obvious that her site really was hacked, as has been claimed.

this all really sucks for her. while she is a corporate-pop piece of crap musician, one thing that remains true is that she's just a kid. it's really easy for me to have some schadenfreude here, but also i feel pretty bad for her as a human being.

about ashley simpson.

andyk.

doude, it's ASHLEE!!! get it straight! not ashley. ASHLEE!!! jeez, have you no respect for the dead?

what can i say? i have a big mouth and can type really fast.

This was the first time I had watched SNL in quite some time, and I'm sure glad I did. This is the article from the NY Times that came out the day after.

NY Times wrote:Teen songbird Ashlee Simpson had a microphone malfunction on "Saturday Night Live" last night, scurrying off stage when a production glitch caught her lip-synching the wrong tune.
The pop star, younger sister of singer and TV star Jessica Simpson, sounded great belting out "Pieces of Me" in her first segment on the show. It was the same song that she butchered at August's MTV Music Video Awards, drawing withering reviews for a flat, out of key performance.

But the triumphant moment turned into a debacle when she came out to debut the song "Autobiography" for a second set. But whoever was responsible for piping in a studio-engineered rendition for Simpson to mouth screwed up, playing "Pieces" once again.

The raven-haired beauty hopped around briefly, then slinked off the stage as her hapless band half-heartedly faked away. It didn't take long for critics to vent their rage on Ashlee Simpson's official Web site.

"Finally, you're exposed for the fraud that you are," wrote an E-mail poster named drdrewby minutes after the embarrassing performance. "You have cheated your fans and people who actually thought that you had a lick of talent. You should quit the music business because you are now and always will be a complete and utter joke."

Said CowboyJeff99: "I knew she sounded like crap live, so I was 'wondering' what was going on when her voice sounded just like the radio edit."

When the cast of the live show came out to bid the audience good night, actor Jude Law tried to explain Simpson's slipup.

"What can I say folks, live TV," Law shrugged.

A still-humiliated Simpson apologized to her fans - and blamed her band for playing the wrong song.

Greg Wilson