Ashlee emotes over cribbed tunes

Molly Finkelstein Backpage Editor

Ashlee Simpson’s career began with a reality show, The Ashlee Simpson Show which allowed America to watch Simpson paint her nails, whine about Ryan Cabrera, and, most importantly, talk about her feelings. Not much has changed since then. Her self-centered debut Autobiography was about being in the shadow of her blonder, taller sister, and her many break-ups with Cabrera. While I do consider Simpson’s feelings terribly fascinating, I was hoping for a more interesting topic for her second album. Her sophomore album, I Am Me, leads me to wonder if Simpson ever does anything but write in her diary.

Considering her self-referencing album titles, and the fact that she writes her own songs (with a team of highly skilled collaborators), I like to take her lyrics at face value. This gives her album the narrative arc of a trippy chick-flick. It starts off in medias res, with the song “Boyfriend”—the first single off the album—in which Simpson tells a girl that she didn’t steal her boyfriend. Personally, I considered this song more intriguing when I thought the lyrics were “And then I stole your boyfriend.” At least that has some action in it. But alas, the real lyrics are “Don’t put words up in my mouth/I didn’t steal your boyfriend.” I’m assuming the female putting “words up in [her] mouth” is Lindsay Lohan. Many UsWeekly photo spreads have shown pictures of Simpson and Lohan’s ex-beau, Wilmer Valderrama, canoodling.

In the next several tracks, Simpson reflects on her relationship with her pseudo-boyfriend, whoever he may be. The songs are reminiscent of those of Michelle Branch, if Michelle Branch perhaps, had some type of malignant nodes on her vocal cords. The lyrics aren’t much better. Even the title of the song, “Beautifully Broken,” offends my sensibilities as an English major.
Simpson then goes clubbing with her girlfriends in the pop-dance track, “L.O.V.E.” The songs starts off with an instrumental bit seemingly cribbed from the Ratatat song, “Spanish Armada.” Try playing the two songs at the same time; the resemblance is uncanny.

The rest of the album involves Simpson whining to no end about her boyfriend, and trying to either get over him or make him love her. In the title track, whose opening sounds suspiciously like Rick Springfield’s hit song “Jesse’s Girl,” Simpson tries to reclaim her identity and convince the guy that his new girlfriend can’t satisfy him. Her argument isn’t too convincing. It mostly consists of her warbling the mantra “I am me and I won’t change for anyone” in bald repetition. I’m rather inclined to believe that maybe a particular male friend liked her better as a blonde.

“Say Goodbye,” oh-so-properly placed as the last track on the album, is about how her relationship isn’t working out. However, the slow pace of the song is the perfect showcase for Simpson’s innate inability to have any type of musical range.

While the plot lacks substance (if her album were a movie, I would be throwing Sno-Caps at the screen), I do have to admit that a couple of tracks, most notably “Boyfriend” and “L.O.V.E” are undeniably catchy. People watching MTV or listening to radio stations that aren’t WVKR will hear these songs four million times, and they will probably get stuck in many heads.