Ashlee Simpson: I'm totally against it and offended by it. I'm going out to let my real talent show, not to just stand there and dance around. Personally, I'd never lip-synch. It's just not me.

The music industry is like a pendulum that periodically swings from "control by the suits" to "control by the artists". Most of the time, the music is predominantly controlled by the suits--the executives and label owners and investors and businesses who have a vested stake in the production of music but don't actually produce any. But every so often their pop mandate gets too insipid even for a docile music public to digest, and there's a sudden revolution to return the music to a purer, more real sound, which lingers for a few years while the suits back off, regroup, figure out how to market this new sound, and seize control of it again, slowly watering it down for mass consumption over time until there is another revolution. The late 50s and early 60s had a polished pop sheen on it so revoltingly wholesome that early Beatles records were a welcome, refreshing pace, and their middle and latter ventures sparked the late 60s championing of creativity and honest, earnest originality in music; the industry controlled by the artists.

Each time the suits seize creative control of the music back from the artists, the machine of pop music gets better at what it does. The late 80s was the industry at its most efficient. A streamlined marketing juggernaut that vaulted pop starlets like Tiffany and boybands like New Kids on the Block onto every teenage girl's bedroom wall. It also seemed that the business had become self-aware of the cycle, and was making efforts to prevent the backlash from happening too quickly or being too bad, and it was keen on evolving its sound to avoid the critical mass that was to follow. Indeed, it would require a major catastrophic event to bring pop music to its knees.

That event came on November 15 1990, when Milli Vanilli played a live performance on MTV, only to have the record skip. It wasn't the event itself that was so shocking; the public has always known that pop music is manufactured, cheap, and fake. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and all that. They just dislike it when the manufactured, cheap facade is so transparent. People aren't as interested in the lie as they are in its persuasiveness.

Ashlee before and after her pop makeover. See, not only does the black hair and leather jacket and punk edge distance her from her equally manufactured plastic sister, but it also makes her the biggest poser since Avril Levigne. Somewhere, Joan Jet is hurling things at people. The stars must have really been aligned that Fall. In concert with the Milli Vanilli farce was Guns n Roses, the reigning kings of the opposite end of the music industry: hard rock and metal. They had been promising a new album for awhile, and everyone was waiting with baited breath to see what it was going to be about. When it was released, it was not one but TWO albums, both of them filled to the brim with incredible, ambitious progressive rock. Over 150 minutes of music. Nine of the songs were over six minutes long. Named "Use Your Illusion I & II", the band ventured to use everything, from orchestras, piano changes, operatic set pieces, and even straight-ahead goofy 80s heavy metal. In short, they were no longer making music; they were making art. And the albums would've gone down in history as one of the most fascinating pieces of rock music ever, except for one thing that no one--especially them--could have foreseen.

A couple months later, in January 1991, Nirvana released Smells Like Teen Spirit. Like a break in the clouds, it was the simultaneous antidote to the bloated excesses of heavy metal and the plastic sheen of pop that had betrayed the public. That one song, and the accompanying album "Nevermind", suddenly made everything pop and rock were trying to do--all their excesses, all their extravagances, all their big hair and flashy clothes and massive stadium concerts and dance choreography and plastic, perfect smiles and squealing guitars which had dominated the music industry for ten years--suddenly seemed very terribly uncool.

Heavy metal was dead. Pop music was dead. The public did not want pretty faces and mass-produced artists anymore. No more cover ups, no more boob jobs, no more plastic surgery and plastic people singing canned, plastic songs. The backlash was as vocal and violent as it was the last time it had occurred, when a public fed up with the music they were force-fed raged against disco. People wanted something REAL, something unprocessed and unpolished. Grunge was in. Nirvana was the spearpoint of a revolution, a change in music psychology. The magazines doted over them, the press reported incessantly about them, labels scrambled to Seattle to sign similar bands, everyone cut their hair and dressed in flannel. The style on the stage was angst, blue-collar, non-showmanship. The very antithesis that music stood for in the yuppified, Reaganomically me-80s. The hype machine was in full swing, and for the first half of the 90s, everything was grunge, and grunge was everything.

For a few years, the artists again dictated what music should sound like and what direction they wanted to take it. But, as they always do, the pop industry crept back, learned the rules of their game, and co-opted the spoils of their musical creativity. It wasn't until the late 90s that pop music felt the waves were calm enough to assault the charts again. Brittney, Christina, Jessica, Mandy, and the boybands that were literally carbon copies of each other retook the airwaves from the real musicians. The system is now in more control of its product than it has ever been at any time in the past, and thanks to the all-pervasive media and the global reach of the internet, it is possible to make pop stars by proxy. It's no mistake that the latest formula for pop star success is nepotism, as evidenced by Aaron Carter (brother of Backstreet Boy Nick), Kelly Osbourne (daughter of Ozzy), and, of course--little Ashlee Simpson, coddled sister of airhead Jessica.

Considering the pop machine's been running on cruise control for a couple years now, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that something like this has happen. In their guidebook to making a #1 hit single, The KLF explained that "being on the dole gives you a clearer perspective on how much of society is run...having no money sharpens the wits. Forces you never to make the wrong decision. There is no safety net to catch you when you fall." In other words, when you are broke, you can't make mistakes. The inverse of that is, of course, that when you are rich, there's no need for such urgency. You can make mistakes. You can be sloppy, candid, and complacent--it's not going to matter. A person with $1 learns to be far more careful where he spends it and what he spends it on than a person with $1000. This is true not just with individuals, but with companies, corporations, social systems and even nations. We take for granted what we enjoy to excess. It happened to the French monarchy in 1789. It happened to Enron a few years ago. And it just happened to the pop music industry on Saturday Night Live. When you sit back on your laurels and just go through the motions, mistakes will happen. You will be brought down.

Now, the only question is: will Ashlee's faux pas bring down pop music the way Milli Vanilli did? ...probably not. Keep in mind that Milli Vanilli were well into their third album, and had five hit singles at the time of their demise. They were on top of the pop world and had been there for quite some time. Ashlee Simpson is still banking on her sister's notoriety, and her career--first album, first single--has barely gotten out of the starting blocks. At the most, this will bring Ashlee Simpson down. But it's not like it was unwarranted. She was simply pushed too fast, too hard, and too much in a system that depends on insta-fame from each and every one of its popstars. Flash profit, I think they call it. For a young girl way in over her head, largely inexperienced, programmed to do only what she's told and contractually obligated to make other people lots of money, this was an eye-opener. A regular musician would've known how to cope--as her band did, or tried to. But she is not a musician. She is a poster, a placard, a product. And products are not very good at dealing with the fact that they are products.