Nearly 10 years later, Ashlee Simpson continues to learn from her infamous October 2004 Saturday Night Live performance, during which she was caught lip-syncing.
For those unfamiliar with Simpson’s slip-up, she had started off her performance with “Pieces of Me,” per USA Today. As she prepared to transition to “Autobiography,” the track for “Pieces of Me” repeated, revealing that she had been lip-syncing the entire time.
According to Us Weekly, Simpson was interviewed on a recent episode of Rachel Bilson and Olivia Allen’s Broad Ideas podcast, where she recalled waking up the day after her SNL rehearsal and being unable to speak.
“I saw the voice doctor that day, and I had two nodules beating against each other,” she explained.
At first she refused to perform, highlighting that she was not in fact “saying this,” but “writing it down because [she couldn’t] talk.” However, she was implored to go on and lip-sync, noting that her band had never rehearsed that way.
“My band has never practiced this, this is not going to go well, I can’t do this,” she remembered thinking. “I can’t do this.”
Despite the fallout, Simpson said she has since learned “the power of [her] no,” ultimately deeming the experience “a humbling moment” for her.
“I had the No. 1 song,” she continued. “It was like everything was about to go somewhere, and then it was just like, whoa. The humility of not even understanding what grown-ass people would say about you… To tune that out, to find my strength, to get up and go again.”
Simpson commended the work of her late vocal coach, whose assistance allowed her to avoid having surgery and who she claimed “saved [her] life.” Noting that “a lot of music artists” have experienced nodes like she did, she teased that hers popped up at “probably the worst timing in life.”
“I think having to find at a young age, that strength to be like, ‘No, I’m good at this, and I will keep going, I will keep fighting,'” she added.
Interestingly enough, Simpson went back on SNL to promote her second album “I Am Me” in 2005, but has been unable to find a recording of the performance “anywhere.”
Ahead of the 2018 premiere of Simpson and her husband Evan Ross‘ reality show, Ashlee+Evan, Simpson told Decider that she was “definitely cool” with reflecting on the experience, noting that it was “a really, really long time ago.”
The 2004 slip-up allegedly continued to take a toll on the show for Kate Winslet, who hosted SNL the week after Simpson was a musical guest. The Titanic star described the studio as “a hotbed of anxiety” in the wake of Simpson’s performance while reflecting on the experience during a virtual interview for the Hamptons International Film Festival in 2020.
Watch Simpson’s interview above.