The Ashlee Conundrum

I am perplexed by the Ashlee Simpson phenomenon: has any young performer with career in first bloom ever had more grim publicity relating to actual performing ability (as opposed to off the field antics) in her first year than young Miss Simpson, and yet blithely continued to skip through the tulips as if nothing were amiss?

First, the most notorious lipsyncing scandal since Milli Vanilli erupted in October over her aborted SNL performance, then at Tuesday night’s Orange Bowl halftime performance, she SANG this time, but she sang her latest single “La La” so badly she was actually booed by the crowd, which typically wouldn’t give a rodent’s rectum about something as trivial as a halftime performance.

You can download the performance and relive the magic for yourself here.

And yet her MTV reality show returns January 26 and the ’04 sales figures for her Autobiography pop-rock album were just released, and, son of a biscuit if she didn’t have the 9th best-selling album of the year with almost 2.6 million units sold – a puzzle indeed.