It looks like Ashlee Simpson was wrong--her Saturday Night Live lip-synching disaster wasn't her band's fault.
Actually, the downfall Simpson suffered on live television on Oct. 23 was specifically her drummer's fault.
So says the drummer himself, Chris Fox, in a missive he posted on Simpson's Website, www.ashleesimpsonmusic.com, in which he takes the brunt of the blame for the pop tart's SNL mishap.
Billing itself as "a few words from someone 'on the inside,'" Fox's mea culpa explains that he is the person "in charge of starting the songs and cueing their backing tracks (miscellaneous percussion, random sound effects, etc.)."
"Plain and simple, I cued the wrong song," Fox wrote.
What followed were about 30 seconds of televised career carnage.
As the band began their second "live" performance of the night, Simpson's voice rang out with the opening lines of "Pieces of Me," the song she'd already performed, while her mike dangled by her waist and her mouth remained closed. Simpson looked perplexed before breaking into her now-infamous jig, or in her words, "a hoedown."
According to Fox, the band rehearsed the songs with "Autobiography" first and "Pieces of Me" second, but switched the order for the show itself.
"So, even though we had already played "Pieces" for our FIRST performance (and quite well from what I'm told), when it came time for the SECOND song, I started "Pieces" (the second song in rehearsal) again without thinking twice," Fox wrote.
Fox denied that Simpson was lip-synching, claiming that she chose to sing along with a backing track because she was having problems with her voice. (Simpson and her father-manager, Joe Simpson, have both attributed these problems to acid reflux disease.)
"I was there," Fox insisted in his letter. "Ashlee was having problems with her voice/throat that day. A couple hours before playing SNL...Your voice is almost gone...What do you do? A lot of performers may have gone the lip-synching route. But Ash trucked on through, singing her own songs, but with a backing vocal track for reinforcement.
"No, this is not something that she usually does. In fact, this is something that she NEVER does. But this was somewhat of an emergency," Fox wrote.
"Ashlee should NOT have blamed her band for what happened. Honestly, she should've blamed me, her drummer. It sucks to say, but it's true."
Simpson has said that the Saturday Night Live fiasco was the first time she had ever made use of a backing vocal track.
In her own letter of explanation on her Website, Simpson stressed she had no hard feelings towards Fox.
"As far as me and my band are concerned...we are all a family and love each other very much--they are the best guys in the world and I wouldn't want anyone else to be with me at this time," Simpson gushed.
In the wake of her SNL fiasco, Simpson has decided to release her song "La La" as her next single from her album, Autobiography, in lieu of the title track as she had originally planned.
Meanwhile, NBC's cameras weren't the only lenses trained on Simpson's meltdown. A crew from CBS' 60 Minutes was also there, taping a Lesley Stahl report on how Saturday Night Live is put together, which aired Sunday.
The tapes showed Simpson storming off of the stage in tears during a dress rehearsal, as SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels explained to Stahl that Simpson was "worried about her voice."
The 60 Minutes cameras also caught the shocked reactions of Michaels and other staffers as Simpson left the stage once again, this time mid-performance on live TV.
Michaels told Stahl that no musical guest had ever walked off the on Saturday Night Live before and that he has a strict rule against lip-synching.
In an effort to poke fun at an awkward situation, the Oct. 30 episode of SNL spoofed Simpson's breakdown in several skits.
In her opening monologue, host Kate Winslet said, "I'm thrilled to be hosting Saturday Night Live. I can assure you it is live because I'm hyperventilating a bit.
"I do however wish it wasn't the week after the Ashlee Simpson incident because now I really do have to perform live." Winslet went on to demonstrate her singing and tap-dancing skills.
Meanwhile, Jessica Simpson stood up for her kid sister on Access Hollywood Tuesday.
"Ashlee is an amazingly talented person and the fact that people are calling her 'Milli Vanilli' is absolutely obscene and ridiculous," the blonde Simpson said.
"She's already sold 3 million records which is more than I sold in two years. She's proved herself."
According to her Website, Ashlee Simpson plans to go on tour in January. Time will tell if her fans are still willing to cough up for a ticket.