Ashlee Simpson "Autobiography" Album

	Title: Autobiography Format: Album Label: Geffen Records Released: 2004-07-20
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Tracklisting & Lyrics

Reviews

The axiom that "It's not what you know but who" has never been proven truer than with this collection of "pop" songs by Jessica Simpson's younger sister Ashlee. After all, it isn't every teenager who signs to a major label, works with a drummer like Kenny Aronoff (Mellencamp, Dylan, Meatloaf), gets her own reality TV show and has fans who await her "Autobiography." Usually, it's preferred to have lived a little before penning your recollections. And usually people don't concern themselves with such revelations until there's something to tell. But let's hear it for the power of television and its ability to make stars out of TV extras! Just as rock star poses can be approximated (as they are in the album's centerfold), so, too, can experience be professionally coached. ("Lala" is my pick for her Oscar nomination as a hard rocker.) Faster than you can yell at a producer to "auto-tune," Simpson's got that wasted, strung-out "life-is-a-long-road" scratch in her voice accompanying a grandiose musical accompaniment that in the 1980s would have been called "Cher," in the 90s "Alanis," and now in the new century: Ashlee. As Neil Young once said, "Some things never change, they stay the way they are." ~Rob O'Connor, LAUNCH.

You hear a lot of echoes throughout Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography, but her big-eyed, bright-smiled sister Jessica isn't behind a one of them. That'll come as no surprise to fans and anyone who has caught the "darker" Simpson sister on MTV, which is responsible for hurtling the hard-edged "Pieces of Me" onto radio playlists across the country and creating a mini frenzy over this CD's content. Stoking the gossip-fueled flames is track three, "Shadow." On it, 19-year-old Ashlee spills her childhood resentment over her sister's attention-gulping career, ending up on a conciliatory note that has the surprising effect of making the Simpson divas' drama seem believable ("Everything's cool nowÅand the past is in the past," she sings). But serious music fans ought not to dilly-dally with the celeb stuff and dive right in, because this disc dishes up more than a lot of us bargained for. "LaLa" revs up the unsuspecting by way of out-and-out lustiness, "Love for Me" lays on the lovelorn angst thick, and the title track is a take-no-prisoners, love-me-or-leave-me rock anthem. Rippling throughout are cunningly malleable vocals, bending here for a kittenish Gwen Stefani effect, stretching there to sound Christina Aguilera-cathartic. Sweeter moments call to mind the indie sensibilities of Jill Sobule. More than others of her reality-show insta-star ilk, Ashlee Simpson's is an autobiography that shouts, "bring on the sequel." ~Tammy La Gorce, Amazon.com.