My Name's Amy...

... and I love Ashlee Simpson.
Hiiii Amy.
And you can all just shut the hell up right now, you naysayers and hipsters, you. I have listened to your Postal Service and your Modest Mouse and I like them too. But sometimes, you just need the melodious wail of a teenager who has been marketed more than Happy Meals to get to the heart of your emotions. Inside, we are all tortured little girls who dye our hair black in a desperate attempt to establish an identity other than "that big-breasted virgin pop star's sister." Or something.
It all began innocently enough. Ashlee's infectious first single, "Pieces of Me" came on the radio in the spring of 2004. If it came on while I was driving around Rhode Island, I would turn it up and wail along. Even with the windows down, I'd throw my head back and yell "OOOOOOOH, it seems like I can fIIIIIIIIIInally rest my HEAD on something REAAAAAL...". It was all good clean fun at the time, but now I see that idyllic time for what it was: a gateway into a more dangerous place. Her whole album.
When Stephanie and I were preparing for our trip to Colorado in August, she said that she'd bought some CDs. "I got Thriller, Jessica Simpson's album and Ashlee's too."
I groaned, as any good graduate of Emerson College would, at the horrible fate I was destined for. The Simpson sisters blaring out of the speakers of a 2-door Jetta in the midwest, where the only radio to come in would be country or religious programming, with nowhere to go except out of my mind. I resigned myself to fate, folded myself into the dangerously overloaded Jetta and got ready for the auditory onslaught.
Jessica's album sucked hard. While Jessica has the better voice of the two, her treacly songs about love, God, and her Muppet-esque husband make me want to slap the nearest blonde I see and hope she feels it. She sucks, end of story.
Ashlee has a voice that sounds like the breaks on a bus. In her song "Shadow," she wails about how her parents abandoned her in the hopes of whoring out their cuter eldest daughter to the Christian rock scene, and whenever she sings "dream" she squeaks. "Livin' in the SHADOW of someone else's drEEEEEEAm." It's painful to listen to. Yet I cannot stop.
Her ballads are terrible, but her uptempo songs are awesome and infect the brain like syphallis. The new one, "La La," is especially catchy. What's it about? I have no idea. Something about a French maid, a lineman (I think she means "linebacker") and liking it rough. Something about it makes me dance around my bedroom like a lunatic, and I even find myself singing along to it on my iPod. Yes, I have even committed to downloading her songs to listen to. Whenever I want.
I also like "Autobiography." I am a writer. Maybe someday I will write an autobiography. I like the part about "stains on my t-shirt" because I am forever dropping food on myself. It's as if she knows me.
Do not weep for me. I am already too far gone. When Miss Simpson comes to the Avalon in March, you will find me in my old Doc Martens from high school rocking out with the high school poseur-punk girls and kicking all their asses.