YMMV / Ashlee Simpson

• Awesome Music: Depending on where you're coming from, young angsty/wangsty pop-rock-loving-teenagers can love Autobiography, people who suffered recent letdowns can love I Am Me and people who love a mishmash of sounds and a Be Yourself theme can love Bittersweet World.
• Condemned by History: As a pop star, at least. In the early 2000s she was one of the most popular singers on the market, with her debut album Autobiography going triple platinum. Then along came her disastrous SNL performance, followed shortly thereafter by another even more disastrous performance at the Orange Bowl. Together, these two incidents created the impression that Ashlee couldn't actually sing without studio help. While her second album was a #1 album, it sold well below her first and then plummeted the next week afterwards, and the third album barely made a dent in the public consciousness, signaling her music career was all but over. While she's had a bit more success as an actress, whenever she's brought up today, it's usually in the same breath as Milli Vanilli, as the punchline of jokes about lip-syncing and manufactured pop stars.
• Growing the Beard: Her voice is more empowered and stronger in Bittersweet World. The performances improved as well during that time, as her vocal quality and stage presence grew exponentially, no doubt due to her Broadway run as Roxie on Chicago.
• Mis-blamed: Most people thought she was lying when she said she lost her voice before the SNL incident and had to use a guiding track. As it turns out, during that same show, 60 Minutes was doing a story on Saturday Night Live and captured her during rehearsals having problems with her voice before it completely went away.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Any conversation about her today will have nothing to do with her music and everything with her disastrous SNL and Orange Bowl performances. For the first, she was caught lip-synching and she tried covering it by doing a jig before leaving the stage. This likely had an impact on the second, where she was booed before her performance even ended.
• Tear Jerker: "Say Goodbye", "Undiscovered", "Love Makes the World Go Round", "Rag Doll", "Unreachable", "Beautifully Broken", "Catch Me When I Fall".

---