More than 20 years later, Ashlee Simpson is able to laugh off her Saturday Night Live lip-syncing snafu.
The artist, who recently won Season 14 of The Masked Singer as Galaxy Girl, confirmed that when she hinted that she was “publicly humiliated, called a fraud, a fake” in her career, she was talking about her infamous 2004 episode of the NBC sketch comedy show.
“Now it’s something I can laugh about,” Simpson told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s something I’ve been through, so it’s not something I look at like I’m going through anymore. It’s a part of my young adulthood and what kind of shaped me as the person I am now.”
Simpson’s musical guest appearance kicked off smoothly with a performance of her single ‘Pieces of Me’ from her debut album Autobiography, using a vocal track for support as she suffered vocal cord inflammation that day. As she and the band planned to perform the album’s title track for their second song, the recording for ‘Pieces of Me’ played again, causing instant confusion.
When asked if she would return to Studio 8H for another musical appearance, Simpson said she “would definitely go back,” noting that she no longer feels the need to prove herself. “That chapter is behind me and I never looked at myself as that moment defined me. Right after that, I went on tour and everything,” she explained.
“Doing a show like this 20-something years later, it’s so fun. I mean, for me, it’s something that I kept doing. I kept touring. I, a girl that loves theater and live music and everything,” added Simpson. “So I think for me, it was never to let that one moment define me and who I was as an artist and a performer.”
Although the public reaction was brutal, SNL invited Simpson back the following season, promoting her sophomore album I Am Me with the song ‘Catch Me When I Fall’, which was about the fallout from the lip-syncing incident.
