When 'Saturday Night Live' Got Blindsided by a Lip-Sync Scandal

A lip-syncing scandal hit the October 23, 2004 episode of Saturday Night Live when pop singer Ashlee Simpson was caught using backing vocal tracks instead of singing live.

The Saturday Night Live staff, including longtime producer Lorne Michaels, later said they were never told of Simpson's plan to use backing tracks. She also became the first guest to walk off the show while it was live on the air.

Simpson later explained that she had lost her voice prior to the show due to a battle with severe acid reflux, and had been pressured by her record label to lip-sync while previously recorded tapes of her singing were played along with her band's live instruments.

The plan worked fine during the first song Simpson performed, "Pieces of Me." But as you can see in the video below, when she returned to perform a second song entitled "Autobiography," her drummer reportedly pressed the wrong button, causing the vocals for "Pieces of Me" to play again.

Watch Ashlee Simpson's 'Saturday Night Live' Lip-Sync Malfunction

Simpson was caught totally off guard, with the microphone nowhere near her face. As her band gamely tried to keep things rolling, she looked around in confusion, briefly danced a jig, then dejectedly walked off stage. Her now-abandoned musicians continued to play for another 30 seconds before the broadcast mercifully cut to commercial.

During the traditional end of show group farewell segment, host Jude Law addressed the malfunction. "Ladies and gentleman, what can I say... live TV!" "Exactly, I feel so bad," a clearly embarrassed Simpson explained. "My band starting playing the wrong song. And I didn't know what to do so I thought I'd do a hoedown. I'm sorry!"

Watch Ashlee Simpson's 'Saturday Night Live' Apology

By sheer luck, the revered CBS news program 60 Minutes was documenting the filming of this particular SNL episode for a feature that ran later that month. Their cameras captured Simpson's difficulties during rehearsals, the staff's shock at the on-air malfunction, and a tearful Simpson rushing off the set.

Watch the '60 Minutes' Report on Ashlee Simpson's 'SNL' Mishap

When interviewed for the segment, Michaels said he was "absolutely not" told of the lip-syncing plan, but did concede that some artists had previously employed backing tracks when appearing on the show: "I think the only time is during dance breaks, where if it was all about dance... and that's a relatively recent development."

He also declared that he wasn't too worried about the negative feedback the incident garnered - which, granted was mostly aimed at Simpson, not the show. "I don't have any big welts or bruises. Life goes on, the great part about Saturday Night Live is there's always next week."

During a 2015 appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, Simpson declared that she was "completely" responsible for what went wrong. "I should've said 'No, I will not go on. I will not do this.'"

Looking back at the incident in 2024 on Broad Ideas With Rachel Bilson and Olivia Allen, the singer added that she knew right away that she should have resisted the pressure from a label executive to use the tapes: "My band's never practiced this, this is not going to go well."

Overall, Simpson said the experience taught her an important lesson. "It was a humbling moment for me. I had the No. 1 song. It was like, everything was about to go somewhere and then it was just, like, 'Whoa!' The humility of not even understanding what grown-ass people would say about you. Awful, awful things. I had to learn to tune that out."

Simpson was invited back to Saturday Night Live as a musical guest the following year, appearing without incident on the Oct. 8, 2005 episode.