Biography Ashlee Simpson

Ashlee Simpson was born on 3 October 1984 in Dallas, Texas. Ashlee is the sister of Jessica Simpson. Simpson is the daughter of Joe, a former Baptist minister and now her manager, and Tina Simpson, who home-schooled Ashlee. An proficient dancer, Simpson began studying classical ballet at the age of three, and was admitted to the School of American Ballet in New York City at the age of eleven. After Simpson's sister Jessica signed a record deal, their family decided to move to Los Angeles, California, where Simpson began appearing in television commercials.

Ashlee Simpsons's first commercial was for the department store Kohl's. Jessica achieved success in pop music in 1999 with her song "I Wanna Love You Forever" and the album Sweet Kisses, and Ashlee became a backup dancer in Jessica's concerts. She also appeared in an episode of the TV sitcom Malcolm in the Middle and had a minor role in the 2002 movie The Hot Chick, a comedy starring Rob Schneider. Ashlee Simpson played the character Cecilia on the television show 7th Heaven from 2002 until the beginning of her singing career in 2004, at which point she stopped regular appearances.

Her vocals, while generally not thought to equal her sister's range, have been praised by some as fitting the style of her music, and are sometimes described as raspy. Simpson and her sister Jessica were tied for third on oft-quoted celebrity-fashion critic Mr. Blackwell's list of the worst-dressed celebrities of 2004. Blackwell wrote that "from gaudy to grim to downright frenetic these two prove that bad taste is positively genetic."

Simpson's first album, Autobiography, was released in the U.S. on July 20, 2004 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart with sales in the first week numbering about 400,000 copies. The album was certified triple platinum on September 2004. Critical reviews were mixed, with the online review collection site Metacritic giving the album fifty-five out of one-hundred points. Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Relic described Autobiography as a "mundane melange of Avril-ish brat pop and Sheryl Crow cod rock" while "E! Online" wrote "Even if it doesn't wow you, Autobiography may surprise you." The single "Pieces of Me" that preceded the album was one of the most widely-played songs in the U.S. in mid-2004 and sold well internationally, but the next single, "Shadow", was less successful and not released in the U.K. However, the "La La" single was released in the UK in 2005.

When appearing for live performances, Simpson performs live with a backing band that consists of Ray Brady (guitar), Braxton Olita (guitar), Zach Kennedy (bass guitar), Lucy Walsh (keyboards and vocals), and Chris Fox (drums). Simpson announced on her website that the band would be named "Ashlee Simpson and Submission," taking the name from the fact that they had received so many submissions of proposals for the name in September 2004.

Ashlee Simpson also occasionally appeared on Newlyweds, a reality show about the married life of Jessica and her husband Nick Lachey; eventually, she got her own MTV reality show entitled The Ashlee Simpson Show, which aired in a time slot subsequent time to Newlyweds. It ran in the U.S. for eight weekly episodes over the summer of 2004, and a second season of ten episodes aired from January to March 2005. The show dealt with the process of writing, recording, and performing Simpson's music, and also dealt with aspects of her personal life.

In addition to her own first album, Simpson sang "Christmas Past, Present, and Future" on the 2004 holiday album Radio Disney Jingle Jams and a duet of the Christmas song "Little Drummer Boy" with her sister Jessica for the album Rejoyce, which they sung together during the ABC variety hour special "Nick & Jessica's Family Christmas". Simpson also co-hosted Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin Eve along with Regis Philbin (in Dick Clark's absence) at the end of the year, hosting the West Coast portion of the show and performing three songs.

Ashlee Simpson often wears shirts with "punk"-style designs and typically has her fingernails painted black. She has refused to discuss her sex life, in contrast to Jessica, who openly stated her intention to remain a virgin until marriage. "I decided that I didn't want to talk about that because it's super personal," she has said. Ashlee got a tattoo of a star on her left wrist after the release of her album, and another tattoo of two cherries was seen on her ankle in 2005.