Ashlee Simpson Booed at Orange Bowl

After the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” during last year’s Super Bowl, watching halftime shows of football games has become a source of amusement rather than tedium. Still, only the really big games have their halftime festivities televised; for the rest, it’s some high school or college marching band doing their salute to condiments. The Orange Bowl this year counted as the college championship game, and so was a very big one indeed. Far bigger than USC’s drubbing of Oklahoma was the crowd jeering Ashlee Simpson, heretofore, a popular songstress.

She didn’t tear up a photo of the Pope, like Sinead O’Connor once did. Nor did she insult the easily insultable president as did the Dixie Chick. The crowd booed her for her performance. She was lousy, and the crowd let her know it.

Everyone has an off-night, but Ms. Simpson has had quite a few of late, and therein lies her problem, and that of a great many other recording artists these days. Viewers of "The Ashlee Simpson Show" on MTV watched her hack her way through the recording of her album (“Autobiography” which has sold 3 million copies and is still in the Billboard Top 40 some six months after its release.). What the viewers heard and what turned up on her record are miles apart – in short, she has some good sound engineers on her team.

She was also pretty bad during August’s MTV Video Awards pre-show. In addition, she was the one caught out lip syncing on Saturday Night Live in October. Then, her performance in front of a stadium audience of 75,000 was painful to hear. The difference was merely the size of the live audience.

Here’s the truth. The young lady cannot perform live. Thanks to the tricks of the recording studio trade, she can be aided into a commercially viable CD, but that’s a long way from doing a live set. There’s a lot of money to be made from her success, and very little for failure. So money gets thrown at her career. But when technology can’t cover for her, the empress has no gown.

In a way, one feels sorry for her. She doesn’t have what it takes, but she is forced by filthy lucre to go out and fake it. If there is any mercy in the universe, she will be spared from future live performances – as will the audience.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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