Ashlee Simpson Falls to 'Pieces'

This just might be an incident Ashlee Simpson will want to omit from her autobiography.

The raven-haired popster was caught in a Milli Vanilli-esque moment during her performance on Saturday Night Live over the weekend.

As Simpson bopped around onstage at the start of her second performance of the night, her voice launched into "Pieces of Me," the song she had already played earlier in the show. Strangely, her microphone was nowhere near her mouth... which was closed.

Apparently dazed, Simpson peered desperately at her bandmembers, then broke into a bizarre, high-kicking jig before slinking off the stage in disgrace. Her band played on for several more moments before SNL cut to commercial.

At the show's end, a humiliated Simpson stood onstage next to host Jude Law and apologized for the incident, making sure to quickly place the blame elsewhere.

"I feel so bad," Simpson said. "My band started playing the wrong song. I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd do a hoedown."

That explains the cringe-worthy jig but not how the band could possibly be responsible for the mystery vocals.

The entire meltdown quickly became a popular moment. Geffen Records, Simpson's label, blamed the incident on a computer glitch that caused a recording of "Pieces of Me" to play, rather than a prerecorded segment of electronic percussion.

On Monday, Joe Simpson, father and manager to the fallen popster, got to work on a damage control campaign, claiming that acid reflux disease made Simpson's voice hoarse, forcing her to rely on the vocal track.

He claimed that it was the first time Simpson had used vocal help onstage and that her drummer had mistakenly pushed the wrong button, resulting in the apparent lip-synch disaster.

Making the incident all the more embarrassing is the fact that Simpson took an emphatic stance against lip-synching when asked about her views on the practice in a recent magazine interview.

"I'm totally against it and offended by it," Simpson told Lucky magazine. "I'm going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd never lip-synch. It's just not me."

See the moment for yourself, to download the video, copy paste the following link in your browser address bar. The first is her the performance and the second her brief 'explanation':

http://www.broadbandreports.com/r0/download/698174~0718ceab96e68e349dfb5d3b52e64349/lipsync.zip
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~m1hjjaap/snlaftermath.mpg

UPDATE: We now also have additional video showing her embarrassing exit, the reaction from show creator Lorne Michaels and other shocked SNL staff. Click here to see it.

Related: More Ashlee Simpson

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