Ashlee Simpson Revisits SNL Lip-Sync Debacle 20 Years Later

The 39-year-old singer has opened up about what she’s since learned from the career-changing moment while appearing on the Broad Ideas With Rachel Bilson & Olivia Allen podcast.

“I’ve never talked about or said, but it’s like the other thing is, learning as a woman, when you say no, or as an artist or a human or whatever, that day I said ‘I will not go on, I don’t care. I can’t speak,'” she explained on Monday’s episode of the 2004 incident.

After rehearsing the night before, Simpson — who was just 19 at the time — began facing vocal issues.

She discovered she had “two nodules beating against each other” which caused her to lose her voice. Despite telling the team she was not going to perform, the singer claimed she was asked to go on stage with pre-recorded vocals and lip sync.

“My band has never practiced this, this is not going to go well,” she recalled thinking of this new plan. “I can’t do this.” But she did. And it did not.

Simpson was slated to sing two songs; the first, “Pieces of Me,” went off without a hitch. As she and her band were preparing for second song “Autobiography,” the “Pieces of Me” intro began to play instead — and so did her vocals before she had the microphone to her mouth.

After escaping the moment with an awkward jig, Simpson returned at the end of the show with an excuse. “My band started playing the wrong song, and I didn’t know what to do, so I thought I’d do a hoedown,” Simpson said. “I’m sorry. This is live TV. These things happen!”

Critics and fans were quick to point out the singer had clearly been lip-syncing for the show, and the moment quickly went viral (such as it was in those days) and became fodder for late-night jokes and parody.

Looking back 20 years on, Simpson said the whole experience taught her “the power of my no”. She added, “If I would’ve had that power to really have been like — which I would have now, or looking back — I’d be like, ‘I won’t be showing up. Period.'”

“I feel like it was a humbling moment for me,” she said. “I had the number one song. It was, like, everything was about go, like, somewhere and then it was just, like, woah! The humility of not even understanding what grown a-s people would say about you, awful, awful things.”

“I think having to find at a young age that strength to be like, ‘I am good at this and I will keep going, and I will keep fighting,'” Simpson said, adding that she felt like she learned “how to get back up and go again.”

The younger sister of singer Jessica Simpson was ultimately asked back to the live show a year later. However, she said she is unable to find footage of that live performance online.

“‘I went back to SNL with my second album and I can’t find it anywhere. I’ve searched and searched for that performance,” she said. “I was really nervous when I was on there and I can’t find it anywhere.”