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Ashlee Simpson is Real

When celebrities make mistakes, people often forget that they are human, too. It`s hard to forget the funny or embarrassing situations celebrities experience - especially when they are on live television. Even though a year has passed since her infamous `Saturday Night Live` lip-synch disaster, Ashlee Simpson is still trying to prove her artistic worth.

`I know that situation happened to me, but I am real, and every artist that you loved has probably lip-synched once in their life,` she adds with a laugh. `Sometimes I`m great, sometimes I`m not ... No matter what, here I am, I`m human and I have imperfections.` That may be part of her appeal. On this sophomore album, Simpson sings about the usual issues that permeate a 21-year-old`s world, like stealing boyfriends. But she also tackles her very public growing pains on tracks like `Beautifully Broken.`

`I feel like I`ve become a lot more confident, just by things that I`ve gone through this year, like falling on my face and learning how to pick myself back up,` Simpson said during the telephone interview, in a voice raspy and girlish at the same time. `There`s beauty in not being perfect, there`s beauty in falling on my face.`

Not that Simpson`s musical debut, `Autobiography`, was marked by stumbles. If anything, it started off as a smashing success. Until last year, Ashlee was best known as the younger sister of pop princess Jessica Simpson, despite acting on `7th Heaven` and other minor celebrity gigs. So when Ashlee set out to record an album, she sought a path completely different from her sister, drawing on inspiration from rockers like Joan Jett, Pat Benatar and Chrissie Hynde. `They have cute outfits and rock out,` says Simpson. `Their voices are so strong and thick and raspy, like mine.`