Ashlee Simpson

Ashlee Nicole Simpson (born October 3, 1984) is a American pop rock singer and an actress. Originally known for being the younger sister of pop singer Jessica Simpson, Simpson eventually rose to prominence in her own right in mid-2004 through her chart-topping debut album Autobiography and the accompanying MTV reality series The Ashlee Simpson Show. There have been claims that Simpson is a "manufactured" musician, which became much more prevalent when Simpson used a pre-recorded vocal track on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) in October 2004. This led to accusations that she had lip synced during the performance, which continued to follow her throughout the promotion of her first album.


Her next tour is planned for the fall of 2005, and she is scheduled to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show in October, both to sing and to discuss the SNL incident. Simpson has said that she would like to return to SNL, although nothing has been confirmed as of September 2005. Her second album, I Am Me, featuring the single "Boyfriend", is scheduled for release on October 18, 2005.

Early history
Born and raised in Texas, Simpson is the daughter of Joe, her father and manager, and Tina Simpson, her mother who home-schooled Simpson. Simpson began dancing at the age of three, and was admitted to the School of American Ballet in New York City at the age of eleven. After Simpson's sister Jessica signed a record deal, their family decided to move to Los Angeles, California, where Simpson began appearing in television commercials. When Jessica achieved fame through her first album, Simpson became a backup dancer for Jessica's concerts. Later, she began appearing in films and television series, including an episode of the TV sitcom Malcolm in the Middle in 2001, and a minor role in the 2002 film The Hot Chick. In 2003, Simpson recorded a song called "Just Let Me Cry" for the soundtrack to the film Freaky Friday. Eventually, Simpson signed a record deal with Geffen Records.

Simpson's first album, Autobiography, was released in the U.S. on July 20, 2004 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart with sales in the first week numbering about 400,000 copies. The album was certified triple platinum on September 2004. Critical reviews were mixed, with the online review collection site Metacritic giving the album fifty-five out of one-hundred points. Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Relic described Autobiography as a "mundane melange of Avril-ish brat pop and Sheryl Crow cod rock" while "E! Online" wrote "Even if it doesn't wow you, Autobiography may surprise you." The single "Pieces of Me" that preceded the album was one of the most widely-played songs in the U.S. in mid-2004 and sold well internationally, but the next single, "Shadow", was less successful and not released in the U.K. However, the "La La" single was released in the UK in 2005.

When appearing for live performances, Simpson performs live with a backing band that consists of Ray Brady (guitar), Braxton Olita (guitar), Zach Kennedy (bass guitar), Lucy Walsh (keyboards and vocals), and Chris Fox (drums). Simpson announced on her website that the band would be named "Ashlee Simpson and Submission," taking the name from the fact that they had received so many submissions of proposals for the name in September 2004.

Simpson also occasionally appeared on Newlyweds, a reality show about the married life of Jessica and her husband Nick Lachey; eventually, she got her own MTV reality show entitled The Ashlee Simpson Show, which aired in a time slot subsequent time to Newlyweds. It ran in the U.S. for eight weekly episodes over the summer of 2004, and a second season of ten episodes aired from January to March 2005. The show dealt with the process of writing, recording, and performing Simpson's music, and also dealt with aspects of her personal life.

In addition to her own first album, Simpson sang "Christmas Past, Present, and Future" on the 2004 holiday album Radio Disney Jingle Jams and a duet of the Christmas song "Little Drummer Boy" with her sister Jessica for the album Rejoyce, which they sung together during the ABC variety hour special "Nick & Jessica's Family Christmas". Simpson also co-hosted Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin Eve along with Regis Philbin (in Dick Clark's absence) at the end of the year, hosting the West Coast portion of the show and performing three songs.

Simpson appeared on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest on October 24, 2004, and as is customary for the show's format, she was scheduled to perform two songs. The first song she performed, "Pieces of Me", went off without a hitch. However, when she began her second song, "Autobiography", a recording of "Pieces of Me" was heard before she had raised the microphone to her mouth. Simpson began to dance nervously (later calling it a "hoe-down") and then left the stage. The show then cut to an emergency commercial break. During the closing of the show Simpson appeared with the guest host Jude Law stating that her band performed the wrong song in the opening on the performance. Others, however, criticized her for what they saw as evidence that she was lip syncing.

On October 25, Simpson called in to the music video show Total Request Live and explained that due to complications arising from a "severe" variation of acid reflux (which had previously been seen in The Ashlee Simpson Show) she had completely lost her voice and that her doctor advised her not to sing. She continued that because of the acid reflux, her father required her to use a guide track for the performance. She said of the incident: "I made a complete fool of myself." According to her, the drummer hit the wrong button, which caused the wrong track to be played. During the October 25 Radio Music Awards broadcast, Simpson pretended, as a joke, to make the same mistake as she did in the SNL incident, but then began to perform "Autobiography", without using a pre-recorded vocal track as she had done during the prior SNL performance. On October 31, the CBS news program 60 Minutes aired footage from Simpson's rehearsals before the SNL performance, in which she was portrayed as having trouble with her voice and seemed visibly upset.

In 2004 Simpson received the "Song of the Summer" Teen Choice Award for "Pieces of Me," as well as the "Fresh Face" award. In addition, she also won a Billboard Award for New Female Artist of the Year in December and was later named Entertainment Weeklys "Breakout Star of 2004" in January 2005. On January 4, 2005, Simpson performed "La La" at the halftime show for the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida; when her performance finished, many of the 72,000-plus spectators booed. Representatives for the Orange Bowl stated that they were pleased with her performance and felt that it was a belated reaction to the SNL incident, while others have speculated that it may have been because the audience of the Orange Bowl was outside of Simpson's target age bracket. Still others disagree, however, and assert that her performance was poor and off-key.

Simpson had a supporting role as an aspiring actress and short-haired "tomboy" named Clea in the romantic comedy film Undiscovered (originally titled Wannabe), an independent film that was released in theaters on August 26, 2005. Simpson, who filmed her scenes in late 2004, said that for her first significant film role she decided to play a secondary character rather than taking on a leading role so soon. Film critic Michael Rechtstaffen of the Hollywood Reporter said Simpson's performance was "subdued" and "unadorned", and Robert K. Elder felt that Simpson was "aware of her own overexposure and underplaying her part fittingly". The film itself met with mostly negative reviews, and placed outside of the top ten, earning $676,048 in its opening weekend.

In January 2005, following her Orange Bowl performance, an Internet petition at PetitionOnline.com complaining about Simpson's singing was among the most active of the site's petitions. Simpson later said, "that's cool. You don't always have to be a fan of everybody's music," also citing the support she had received from her fans.Around the time of the petition, Cosmopolitan magazine chose Simpson to be on the cover of the February 2005 issue,naming her the "Fun Fearless Female of the Year". to late April 2005. The opening acts for the tour were Pepper's Ghost and The Click Five.In addition to her usual Autobiography songs, Simpson also performed three cover songs; The Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket", Blondie's "Call Me", and Madonna's "Burning Up" along with Simpson's own unreleased song "Hollywood". She said that the tour would be "stripped down", without pyrotechnics, and that "it's going to be me and my band getting out there and having fun."[24] In March 2005, Simpson stated that she would like to incorporate the feel of music from the 1980s on her second album, and that the album would focus less on relationships and more on herself. She also said that she wanted to do another television show, but that The Ashlee Simpson Show would conclude at the end of its second season,the last episode of which aired at the end of March.

Simpson has cultivated a somewhat more rebellious and pop-rock oriented image than that of her sister. Previously blond like Jessica, she dyed her hair dark during the recording of the MTV reality show after she finished filming for the 7th Heaven television series. Simpson's songs also have rock elements absent from her sister's music, and to add to this image Simpson often wears shirts with "punk"-style designs and typically has her fingernails and toenails painted black. Her forays into rock fashion, such as her three tattoos (a star, two cherries, and the word "love") are frequently followed by the media.

Her vocals, while generally not thought to equal her sister's range, have been praised by some as fitting the style of her music, and are sometimes described as raspy. Simpson and her sister Jessica were tied for third on oft-quoted celebrity-fashion critic Mr. Blackwell's list of the worst-dressed celebrities of 2004. Blackwell wrote that "from gaudy to grim to downright frenetic these two prove that bad taste is positively genetic."

She has refused to discuss her sex life, in contrast with her sister Jessica, who openly stated her intention to practice sexual abstinence until marriage. "I decided that I didn't want to talk about that because it's super personal," she said of the situation.[28] Simpson's relationship with Josh Henderson lasted about two years and ended during the first episode of The Ashlee Simpson Show. Soon she began her relationship with musician Ryan Cabrera, a relationship that was also featured in the reality show, and Simpson appeared as Cabrera's love interest in the music video for Cabrera's song "On the Way Down". The two were reported to have split up in August 2004 due to their busy schedules, but they were sometimes seen together in the months that followed.

At the beginning of the second season of The Ashlee Simpson Show Simpson indicated that they had resumed their relationship, although the two broke up again in early 2005. Simpson says the single "Boyfriend" from her upcoming album I Am Me "is about [how] every girl out there sometimes thinks you stole her boyfriend. It's just making fun of that"; she says it is not about Lindsay Lohan and Wilmer Valderrama, although there have been rumors that Simpson stole Valderrama from Lohan. Another song on the album, "Beautifully Broken", deals with the SNL incident.

There have been arguments that Simpson is a "manufactured" artist and mediocre singer, and that her appearances on her MTV reality show were "phony" and aimed at promoting her album. Such critics cite incidents like the SNL episode and the Orange Bowl performance as proof of their claims, while others consider Simpson's carefully crafted image instead of her music to be the reason for her continued success.

Assuming she is a manufactured artist, much of the media speculate that Simpson was pushed to fame through the aggressive management style and contacts of her father, Joe Simpson, who is her manager and was the executive producer of her reality show. Furthermore, some think that Simpson has lip-synced on occasions other than the SNL episode, comparing the impact of the SNL incident to the incident Milli Vanilli had in 1990 in a live MTV performance in which the guide track skipped, revealing that they had lip-synced.

In early 2005, Simpson's marketing campaign was accused of astroturfing by users on several websites. A post on Metafilter claimed that the marketing company posted the same text, which contained the text, "I just read about Ashlee in us weekly. Those guys at the football game were total jerks." (the "football game" referring to the Orange Bowl incident) under the user name "mandyc19" on over three hundred different music-related forums in order to further promote Simpson and paint her in a positive light. This (and possibly other instances) led to a new term, "Ashleeturfing", to describe faux fan raves such as this.

Avril Lavigne

Avril Ramona Lavigne (born September 27, 1984) is one of the most popular new pop punk singer/songwriters of recent years with eight hit singles and two world-wide number-one albums to her credit, and is well-known for her "skater punk" persona.

Born in Belleville, Ontario to conservative Franco-Ontarian Catholic parents (John and Judy Lavigne), Lavigne grew up in Napanee singing country music and in a church choir and taught herself guitar. The usual anglicized pronunciation of her French name is /'ævr?l l?'vi?n/. She was discovered by her first professional manager while singing country covers at a Chapters bookstore in Kingston, Ontario. By the age of sixteen, she was signed by then A&R rep Ken Krongard of Arista Records who invited his boss, Arista head, L.A. Reid, to hear her sing in a New York studio. She then completed work on her first album.

Let Go — career breakthrough
Apparently, early attempts to co-write songs for her failed to meet her approval, and she eventually moved to Los Angeles, California and co-wrote her album with Clif Magness and songwriting team The Matrix, whose previous work included songs for Sheena Easton and Christina Aguilera. Her first album, Let Go, was released by Arista on June 4, 2002, and was certified "Quadruple Platinum" less than six months later by the Recording Industry Association of America. She was named "Best New Artist" at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards and at the 2003 Juno Awards, where she led all musicians with six nominations, winning four Junos. She also has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards but has not won any to date.

By December 2004, Let Go had sold fifteen million albums and reached the number one spot in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom (At that time, Lavigne was the youngest female solo act ever to have a number one album in the UK charts, a record now held by Joss Stone). Let Go also peaked at number two in the United States.

It is sometimes claimed she is the youngest Canadian to ever sell a million copies in her homeland; however that record is held by Ottawa-born crooner Paul Anka. His single, "Diana", was recorded when he was only sixteen, and is still regarded as the fastest selling 45rpm single in history.

Let Go was the source of four hit singles (the first three with the Matrix), in various parts of the world:

"Complicated" went to number one on the U.S. adult charts and in Australia while reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100;
" Sk8er Boi" went top ten in the U.S. and Australia and number one in Canada;
" I'm with You" reached number one on the U.S. and world adult charts (based on the U.S., UK, Canada, Germany, France, and Australia), and number four on the Billboard Hot 100;
" Losing Grip" reached number one in Canada, number ten in Taiwan, number twenty in Chile, and the top fifty on a composite European chart.
" Weird Al" Yankovic did a parody of "Complicated" on his Poodle Hat album called "A Complicated Song" — a sure sign of her impact on popular culture.

The media has often compared her to Alanis Morissette, though she has been criticized for not being as strong a lyricist as Morissette at the same age. She has also often been compared with singers like Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch, who emerged at about the same time and were popularly credited, with Lavigne, as part of a trend towards more earnestness and genuine creativity in an often vacuous and pre-fabricated teen pop music market.

While her marketing has been every bit as sophisticated as, for instance, that of Britney Spears and her competitors, a profile in the Washington Post found that in the flesh, her personality did not reflect the marketing, and instead found her, if anything, something of a wide-eyed innocent, citing the fact that she was intending to purchase her first Ramones CD. In another interview, she listed her current listening tastes as including Blink 182, Sum 41, and System of a Down. Lavigne is currently engaged to Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 and hired a former member of that band Mark Spicoluk as a member of her backing band.

She describes her first album as a pop album with "a couple of rock songs on it", and has indicated a desire to write more rock-oriented songs in the future.


Under My Skin
Lavigne wrote most of her second album, Under My Skin, with Canadian singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk. She also co-wrote one track, "Nobody's Home", with Ben Moody, formerly of Evanescence, and the rest with her former lead guitarist Evan Taubenfeld. Lavigne used three producers for Under My Skin: Butch Walker of Marvelous 3, Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace (also Kreviazuk's husband), and Don Gilmore, who has produced Good Charlotte and Linkin Park.

Under My Skin was released on May 25, 2004 and went to number one around the world, notably in the U.K., USA, Canada, and Australia, and on the Billboard Internet charts. The first single, "Don't Tell Me", was released early, and by June 2004, has gone to number one in Argentina, top five in the U.K. and Canada, and top ten in Australia, Brazil, and a European composite chart.

The second single, "My Happy Ending", reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100, making it her third biggest hit to date. She made the music video to the track in Actor/Singer Eric West's neighborhood. The third single, "Nobody's Home", only managed to reach number forty-one on the Billboard Hot 100, but due to the fans and people's acceptance for the song, it easily became a hit.

Under My Skin's fourth single, "He Wasn't", reached number one in Canada, making the song her eighth number-one release since "Complicated". However, the chart trajectory was somewhat weak in the U.K., and "He Wasn't" only reached number twenty-three. The song was not released in the United States.

Lavigne won a World Music Award in 2004 for favorite pop/rock artist, and also, once again led all the Juno nominees at the 2005 Juno Awards (five nominations), picking up three, adding to her previous four, making seven.

Some members of the old school, hardcore punk community have an intense dislike for Lavigne and her style of music, which they believe waters down what punk is really all about. Comments she has made, showing a lack of knowledge/interest in the seventies punk movement and the luminaries of that movement, has led some to label her a poseur. Her music is also highly apolitical, and commercial in nature, leading to sell-out accusations.