Ashlee Simpson

Ashlee Simpson is an American singer-songwriter and actress whose two-decade career has produced multiple defining mid-2000s American pop-rock-music albums — particularly her 2004 first commercial album Autobiography. She was born Ashlee Nicole Simpson on October 3, 1984, in Waco, Texas, into an American Southern Baptist family. Her father Joe Simpson was a Southern Baptist minister and music-business manager, and her mother Tina Ann Drew was a homemaker. Her older sister Jessica Simpson is also an American pop singer-and-actress.

Her teenage career across 2001–2003 — across her recurring supporting role as Cecilia Smith on The WB sitcom TV series 7th Heaven (2002–2004) and her ongoing music-career engagement under her father's Joe Simpson Productions management — launched her early-2000s American TV-and-music public profile.

Her July 20, 2004 first commercial album Autobiography — released by Geffen Records — debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold over four million American copies. The 2004 first commercial album produced her single "Pieces of Me" (which peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100).

Her October 23, 2004 "SNL Lip Sync Incident" — across which her pre-recorded backing-vocal track was mistakenly played as the wrong song's recording during her live Saturday Night Live musical-guest performance, producing approximately 30 seconds of uncomfortable on-camera attempts to recover from the technical-malfunction — shaped her later biographical narrative. The 2004 SNL incident produced her subsequent dance-jig retreat from the SNL stage that became one of the most-played American Internet-era video clips of late-2004.

Her subsequent commercial career has produced multiple American pop-rock-music albums — particularly her 2005 second commercial album I Am Me and her 2008 third commercial album Bittersweet World. Her parallel late-2000s American TV-and-film career has produced her 2006–2007 lead role as Violet Foster on the MTV reality-TV series The Ashlee Simpson Show and her 2007 lead role as Roxie Hart in the Broadway revival of Chicago (which she performed across her August–September 2007 short-term Broadway engagement). She married Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy in 2008 (divorced 2011, with one son together); she married Evan Ross in 2014, and the couple has two children.

Her name Ashlee derives from a personally-modified spelling of Ashley (from the Old English place-name meaning "ash tree clearing"). Ashlee was a popular American girls' name across the late 20th century.