How Ashlee got caught out of sync

It was “Saturday Night,” but it sure didn’t sound “Live.” Pop star Ashlee Simpson and NBC’s venerable “SNL” were still getting static Monday for a performance malfunction on Saturday that left the 20-year-old apparently busted for covert lip-syncing as Simpson’s band began playing the guitar-driven pop song “Autobiography” while her disembodied vocals for “Pieces of Me” came from somewhere offstage.

On Monday, Joe Simpson, the singer’s father and manager, told a radio interviewer that the ugly glitch was due to a health problem.

The elder Simpson told Ryan Seacrest of KIIS-FM (102.7) that his daughter has acid reflux and, on Saturday, that condition gave her swollen vocal cords. “Unfortunately, that happened to us on Saturday, so just like every other artist in America she has backing tracks ... so you don’t have to hear her croaking through a song on national television.”

“She never used them before,” he said of the vocal tracks, but “you have to do what you have to do.”

On Monday night, Simpson was scheduled to play the Radio Music Awards, which was also to be aired live on NBC. The show was after press time, but her father-manager said Simpson would sing alone and live.

Lip-syncing is a hot-button issue in music but not a novel one. Famously, Milli Vanilli won the Grammy for best new artist in 1990 only to have it revoked when it was revealed that the “singers” were really dancers moving their mouths to other people’s music.

But for years the pop stars who would go on “American Bandstand” and other popular pop shows were so unconcerned about lip-syncing that they didn’t bother to bring a mike on stage. In recent decades, as choreography and elaborate show spectacles became the norm in youth pop, many huffing-and-puffing artists used offstage vocal tracks to replace or enhance their own singing.

Roy Laughlin, general manager of KIIS, said that the radio station’s concerts have hosted plenty of canned or semi-canned acts.

“Different ones do it,” he said Monday. “I thought they all kind of gave it up because everyone kept getting busted. Apparently not everybody has though.”

There are many music-craft-minded performers who see canned vocals as a fraud on the live-performance contract between artists and their paying fans. Elton John took a shot at Madonna this month. “Since when has lip-syncing been live?” John asked the audience at a British music awards show where Madonna was a nominee for top concert act. Madonna’s camp has denied the claim.

Lou Pearlman, the music mogul who had a hand in the creation of the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, said the physicality of youth pop shows makes it a near necessity to “use tracks to put on the show you want to put on and do it four to five nights in a row in an arena.” The tracks typically replace the singers on energetic songs.

After Simpson’s exit, Law said, “Ladies and gentlemen what can I say ... live TV.” Simpson jumped in: “Exactly ... feel so bad, my band played the wrong song.” But Monday, Simpson’s story, relayed by her father, had changed.

Her dad said she will prove herself in future shows. “This was a learning experience.”