This time, Ashlee Simpson puts the ‘live’ in ‘SNL’

There were no performance malfunctions or embarrassing lip-synching snafus when Ashlee Simpson returned to the scene of the crime over the weekend.

Instead, the teen pop star who humiliated herself nearly a year ago on her first “Saturday Night Live” appearance when her band began playing one song while her vocals offered another, uneventfully delivered one song inspired by the incident and another the tabloids assume was written for actress Lindsay Lohan.

The songs are part of Simpson’s upcoming album, “I Am Me,” which she wrote herself. Simpson has denied that she wrote “Boyfriend” as a response to public speculation that she stole actor Wilmer Valderrama from Lohan.

But in her introduction to the song, Simpson admitted that she did write “Help Me When I Fall” as a direct response to the worst moment of her career -- when she performed on the show last year and it became clear she was lip-synching.

In the new song’s chorus, Simpson asks: “Who will be the one to save me from myself? Who will be the one who’s there and not ashamed to see me grow? Who’s gonna catch me when I fall?”

Jessica Simpson’s little sister was so affected by her “Saturday Night Live” nightmare that she wrote a second introspective piece for her album about it, “Beautifully Broken.” Although Simpson did not address the audience during the appearance, her performance of “Help Me When I Fall” seemed to speak for her:

“It may seem I have everything, but everything means nothing when the ride that you’ve been on, that you’re coming off, leaves you feeling loss. Is anybody out there? Does anybody see that sometimes loneliness is just a part of me?”