After a huge national debacle on live television when she was just 20 years old, Ashlee Simpson Ross finally found a way to win back the love of her small-screen audience: She put a galactic mask over her head and let the vocals break.
Forget that 2004 incident where she was caught singing over a backing track during an appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” Sure, she did a weird little dance and then fled the set. Of course, his dad made excuses. But that's a thing of the past.
The winner of “The Masked Singer,” who is married to Evan Ross, the son of singer and actor Diana Ross, appeared cheerful as she celebrated her victory in a post-finale interview published Wednesday night. In the season finale, she sang Olivia Rodrigo's song “Good 4 U.”
“I feel like I became Galaxy Girl and had the best team ever,” Simpson told People. “I mean, it was cool to do it. It was cool to act, not being able to see where I'm going. You can hardly see where you're going. I think just becoming that Galaxy Girl character and people not knowing who I was, it was just a different way to play that. I enjoyed it. It was definitely a moment of discovery.”
In the fall of 2004, Simpson, now 41, was about to make her second song as a musical guest on “SNL.” Following in her famous sister's footsteps as Jessica Simpson's newlywed reality show with then-husband Nick Lachey was moving forward, she had just released what would become the best-selling album of the year by a female singer.
Then the band started and the wrong lyrics started playing from the ether. Simpson didn't sing them. So he did some sort of awkward dance before walking off the set and leaving the band stranded. Cut to commercial.
Lorne Michaels would later confirm that it was his first time on the sketch show.
“What can I say? Live TV,” host Jude Law told the audience during the show's farewell sequence that night. Simpson, standing next to him, chimed in with a quick explanation of what had just happened, throwing her band under the bus and not making much sense.
“I feel really bad. My band started playing the wrong song and I didn't know what to do, so I thought I'd do a hoedown. I'm sorry!” she said.
This was a year after his sister asked, with cameras rolling, whether a can of Chicken of the Sea contained tuna or chicken, and whether the chicken wings were made from buffalo. So, what stuck in people's minds were those lyrics that came out of the ether. Ashlee Simpson, it was clear, intended to lip-sync, which sort of implied to casual observers that she couldn't sing. He became, for many, a laughing stock.
His father later said that acid reflux had caused his vocal cords to swell, requiring the last-minute switch from Live to Memorex. He called it a learning experience and said she would prove herself in future programs.
“Unfortunately, that happened to us on Saturday, so like every other artist in America, she has backing tracks… so you don't have to hear her squawk a song on national television,” Joe Simpson told Ryan Seacrest in a radio interview.
“She never used them before,” he said of the vocal tracks, but “you gotta do what you gotta do.”
A few months later, she was booed on national television when she did the 2005 Orange Bowl halftime show. People joked that it was worse than what happened on “SNL.”
So, yes, his career continued, but it hasn't been 100% smooth. After a couple more albums, he accepted a role in a Broadway musical and eventually returned to acting. She said over and over again that she was going to return to music, but life kept getting in the way.
Then in 2025, after celebrating the 20th anniversary of his album's release with a brief concert at a WeHo nightclub the previous year, he announced a residency at the Venetian in Las Vegas. The concert proved popular enough to extend it until 2026.
And over the course of the season of “The Masked Singer,” Simpson finally proved to casual observers that he has a voice and knows how to use it. She even surpassed her husband, who competed this season as Stingray and was excluded from episode 10.
“Acting is my happy place, and doing it again makes me feel really good,” she told People. “I feel inspired to keep playing shows and creating new music. And moments like 'Masked Singer' and Vegas, and I'm looking forward to Pride and Stagecoach; those moments just make me realize, 'Oh, this is what I love to do.'
“I'm happy to be doing it again.”
Good for you, Galaxy Girl.
