What the heck happened with Ashlee Simpson's second musical number last night on Saturday Night Live? If you watched the live, East Coast feed you saw her introduced by host Jude Law…then the music started and her voice, obviously pre-taped, was heard but it wasn't coming out of her mouth. Instead of carrying on, she stopped all attempts at singing (or maybe lip-syncing) and went into a silly dance, then walked off the stage. The cameras held on her back-up band for about twenty seconds, then the director went to a commercial. During the show's closing when the cast gathered on stage, she apologized to the audience and said her band started playing the wrong song…but it sure looked like what had happened was that she had pre-taped the vocal for her number and someone began its playback too soon, catching her and the on-camera musicians unaware.
When the show was broadcast three hours later on the West Coast, the audio had been remixed to remove the playback of her vocals. So her number started and the music was a little odd, like everyone wasn't playing the same notes. Then she looked puzzled, did the silly dance, then walked off and the band played a bit 'til the director went to commercial. In other words, it did look like what she described in her closing statement…but that's only because the engineers had removed her vocal playback.
It is, of course, not at all unprecedented for performers to pre-tape all or part of their vocals and then lip-sync to that when the audience thinks they're singing live. Happens all the time, especially when the performance involves intricate choreography, but it makes audiences feel cheated so it is vigorously denied. Usually. It appears Ms. Simpson got caught doing this.
I don't think it's a big deal. I'm just kinda curious what will happen when this episode airs again. As mentioned before on this weblog, Saturday Night Live occasionally "fixes" things for reruns, replacing a messed-up segment with better footage from the dress rehearsal taping. When they rebroadcast the famous episode in which Sinead O'Connor concluded her second musical number by tearing up a photo of the Pope, that moment is not seen. They inserted some or all of the dress rehearsal performance which ended with her ripping up a different, non-controversial picture. Whole sketches have sometimes been taken from the earlier taping. Assuming Ashlee Simpson's second number went well when she did it in dress, that's probably what will be seen whenever last night's episode is broadcast in the future.