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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Humanzee!
Ashlee Simpson has an entire TV show to help humanize her, and it seems to be working. Her first album, "Autobiography," debuted at number one on the charts after selling 398,000 copies in its first week in stores. Thank God Ashlee dyed her hair brown, so that everyone knows she's totally punk rock, and not just some clone of her fluffy blonde bunny sister, Jessica!
My hair is that natural shade of punk rock that doesn't come from a bottle -- "Graying Mousy Brown," I call it. So I fully expected to loathe the little faux-rocker (See also: "quasi-punkette") and the show she rode in on when I settled down Saturday for "The Ashlee Simpson Show" marathon on MTV Saturday. Aside from the obvious fact that I'm trying to humanize myself by letting you know that I spent part of my weekend watching a 19-year-old lament how totally hard it is to, like, make an album, I actually kind of enjoyed it. And look, it is really hard to make an album, even if you do have a team of the most sought-after, highest paid producers and songwriters in the business on call to write melodies, type in lyrics, set levels, record, mix and submit the demo to Geffen. Basically, it looks like Ashlee mostly had to show up and tell them what flavor of herbal tea she wanted.
Having written songs the old-fashioned way since I was Ashlee's age, I can tell you that comparing the scrappy, real-life version of making an album to Ashlee's version is sort of like comparing boot camp to an extended stay at a luxury spa. Like when Ashlee felt all, like, sad about breaking up with her boyfriend, what did she do? She flew to New York City and stayed in a great hotel and her producers flew there to meet up with her and write songs in her room all night! Yay!
All right, so we've established that Ashlee is rich, she's basically already famous (because of big sis and a recurring role on "7th Heaven") and Geffen has the resources to essentially will a hit record into existence. We've established that Ashlee is the sort of person who shows up late to a meeting with Geffen president Jordan Schur and doesn't blink when he tells her, "I don't want people to buy Ashlee Simpson for a song, I want them to buy Ashlee Simpson," even though he's telling her that she is the product and her songs have very little to do with anything. We've established that Ashlee wants dark hair so that she's nothing like her sister without whom she wouldn't have a career in the first place. We've established that Ashlee spells her name with two e's, which really isn't her fault, but which is still enough grounds for loathing her, sight unseen.
Unfortunately, as easy as it is to despise Ashlee and everything she stands for, the girl really isn't so bad. Even though she's floating along, completely oblivious to the bubble she's living in, making ridiculous, naive comments about how challenging her little world is, she's still sweet and clever and goofy and pretty much everything you want a 19-year-old to be. There are cameras following this girl around the clock -- you know that if she had a temper tantrum or just lashed out at someone, we'd see it. In fact, she keeps her composure and her sense of humor the whole time, even when she's grappling with unnervingly incomprehensible notes from label execs trying to figure out how to "break her," the ironic term for locating the proper sales category under which to introduce their new product.
