If you haven't already heard, pop singer Ashlee Simpson had a bit of difficulty last night during her performance on Saturday Night Live. You've got to watch the video for yourself, but the gist is that she is up on stage with her band, and the music starts playing in the background - with her voice included - before she or her band are ready to go... Leaving her to do only one thing, of course - walk off stage as the show goes to commercial.

Check it out here for .avi format or here for .wmv format.

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[update] Drudge leads us to this article by Greg Wilson at the New York Daily News. My favorite part of this whole thing is the end, when Simpson "blamed her band for playing the wrong song" - yeah, the wrong song that the band was standing their listening to without playing their instruments. Talk about horrorshow.

Over at Blogcritics, Eric Olsen makes some great points and wonders why Simpson didn't just take better control of the situation.

Defamer has more, including this remix a la "Benny Hill" and Robert Stribley asking "if that'll be a career ender?"

[update 5:30pm] The Ashlee Simpson official site has some interesting discussion going on in the forums.

On MeFi, Trik just posted a link to a site where the videos can now be seen, as they original .avi and .wmv files seem to be down. Check them out here at Contemporary Insanity. Hell, the whole MeFi thread is worth reading at least once, so go do it.

Rumors are abound about Ashlee Simpson's scheduled performance tomorrow at the Radio Music Awards in Las Vegas. And considering she's considered in the top acts being promoted in this press release, that's a big deal. I'm actually more curious to see if NBC would have her on air again just two days later after this SNL situation.

The f.u.b.a.r. forums have an amusing tidbit of information. Simpson isn't a big fan of lip synching, just so you know. "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." This is a quote she apparently shared with Lucky magazine, though I haven't been able to find it online yet.

[update 6:49pm] Let the capitalism begin!

The unofficial SNL forums are still rocking.