Jessica Ann Simpson (born July 10, 1980) is an American pop music singer who rose to fame during the late-1990s. In the following decade, she starred with her then-husband Nick Lachey, in the MTV reality show Newlyweds, released her own line of Dessert Beauty and Dessert Treat beauty products and started a career as an actress while continuing her music career.Early life and beginning Simpson was born in Abilene, Texas and raised in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas, Texas. She is the daughter of Joe Truett Simpson (a former Baptist youth minister) and Tina Ann Drew (a former Sunday School teacher). She has a younger sister, Ashlee, who launched her own music career in mid-2004. Simpson started singing at the age of twelve as a part of her Baptist church choir. At the same age, she made anunsuccessful application for TheNew Mickey Mouse Club, which starred
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fellow pop singers Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake,among other future stars.
Simpson attended J.J. Pearce High School in Richardson, Texas. She was discovered singing at a church camp by a head of a small contemporary Christian record label and recorded an album over the next three years; however, the label folded before the record could be released. She dropped out in her senior year in order to tour and promote her demo album, which was funded by her grandmother, Joyce (thus the reason for the name of her 2004 holiday album, Rejoyce: The Christmas Album); she later earned her GED. During this time, she toured with the Christian Youth Conference circuit performing with Kirk Franklin, God’s Property and CeCe Winans. She and her father sold copies of the album after her performances.
Tommy Mottola of Columbia Records obtained a copy of the album and, thinking she had potential as a pop singer, signed her as such. Christian influences can still be found in much of her music.
1999–2002: Pop music beginnings
Sweet Kisses
In late 1999, Simpson released her debut album Sweet Kisses, which reached a peak of number twenty-five on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and also made the top forty of the UK charts. The album proved to be a success, selling two million copies in the U.S. Her first single, the platinum-selling “I Wanna Love You Forever,” reached the top five of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and the top ten in Canada and the UK. Her second single, a duet with then-boyfriend Nick Lachey of boy band 98 Degrees, “Where You Are”, was a modest radio hit. The last single from the album, “I Think I’m in Love with You”, was a top forty hit in the U.S. and a top twenty hit in Canada and the UK. In 2000, Simpson won two Teen Choice Awards for Choice Breakout Artist and Love Song of the Year (”Where You Are”). In 2000, Simpson appeared on the 98 Degrees video My Everything.
Irresistible
Released during the summer of 2001, Simpson’s second effort Irresistible reached the top ten of the Billboard 200 and top twenty of the Canadian album chart. Despite this improvement over her debut, the album’s sales were less than satisfactory; to-date, it has only managed to be certified gold in the U.S. for selling 500,000 copies. The title track lead single, “Irresistible”, reached the top twenty in the U.S., Canada, and the UK, as well as the top forty in Australia. A follow-up single entitled “A Little Bit” was also released, but failed to achieve substantial success. In 2002, Columbia Records released a EP remix album titled This Is the Remix containing electro-dance remixes of Simpson’s biggest hits.
2003–present: Marriage and career development
On October 26, 2002, Simpson married Nick Lachey. She famously announced that she remained a virgin until her wedding night, making Lachey the only man she had been with intimately. During the summer of 2003, Simpson and Lachey’s reality show Newlyweds began airing on MTV. Although Simpson was moderately famous before the series began, the show is considered the crowning glory of her career.
Throughout the run of four seasons she seemed to epitomize the stereotypical dumb blonde, notably when she asked Lachey whether the Chicken of the Sea tuna she was eating was chicken or fish.
She also indicated that she believed that buffalo wings were made from actual buffalo. Her apparent ignorance helped turn the show into a huge hit, making the average rating for each episode about 1.4 million viewers. (The gaffe was also a running joke in a Pizza Hut commercial, where she was shown to be annoyed at having her intelligence mocked again.) When introduced to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Simpson responded: “You’ve done a nice job decorating the White House”. It has been suggested that her apparent ignorance is simply an act she has parlayed into various commercial, television and film endorsements.
Banking on the success of her new popularity, she appeared on a variety show with Lachey on the ABC called the Nick and Jessica Variety Hour in 2004. A pilot for a sitcom on ABC was also planned, but was rejected by network executives in May 2004. During that summer, Simpson won three Teen Choice Awards for Female Fashion Icon, Hottie Female, and Female Reality/Variety TV Star for Newlyweds. In 2005, the series won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite Reality Show and wrapped shortly after.
Simpson’s third album, In This Skin, was released during the summer of 2003 to coincide with the premiere of Newlyweds. Though initially the album was not a huge success, it rebounded on the charts when a special collector’s edition was released in the spring of 2004. It subsequently reached a peak of number two on the Billboard 200 and the top forty of the UK charts, due largely to the success of Newlyweds. The album eventually proved to be her most commercially successful, selling almost three million copies in the U.S.; it also yielded arguably her most successful single to-date, “With You”.
Simpson released a holiday album in late 2004 entitled ReJoyce: The Christmas Album, which sold moderately. During the summer of 2005, Simpson made her first major film appearance as Daisy Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard. The film debuted at number one on the U.S. box-office chart, grossing more than thirty million USD. One of the songs from the film’s soundtrack, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”, was sung by Simpson. The track won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite Song from a Movie in early 2006. Her performance however, was lambasted by film critics, and she was nominated for worst supporting actress in the Razzie Awards; Simpson’s sister Ashlee was also nominated for her role in the film Undiscovered.
In November 2005, after months of speculation, Simpson and her husband Nick Lachey officially announced that they had split. Simpson filed for divorce on December 16, 2005, citing “irreconcilable differences”. She has asked the courts not to grant Lachey spousal support. The couple’s divorce has been highly publicized worldwide. Lachey is reportedly trying to take half of the couples’ joint worth.
The couple sold their Calabasas mansion to Malcolm in the Middle star, Justin Berfield for an undisclosed amount.
Simpson’s next album, Public affair, was released August 29 2006 with Epic Records, ending her ties with co-owned Columbia Records. She has also finished filming her second movie Employee of the Month, with Dane Cook, in New Mexico She launched a shoe collection that was set to be released in major department stores across the U.S. from February 2006.
A Public Affair
Her next single “Public Affair” hit radios at the end of June 2006.
Jessica is also set to further her movie career in 2 big screen productions this year. Firstly, she beat out Brittany Murphy to the role of “Emily Benjamin” is “Major Movie Star” aswell as stating she is also “on-board” as Pam Ewing in the big screen adaptation of Dallas (Co-Starring with Jennifer Lopez, Lindsay Lohan & John Travolta) set to go into production in late 2006.
Public image
At the beginning of her career, Jessica gained public attention when she proclaimed she was saving herself till marriage. Her music videos at the time also displayed an innocent look with very few sexual innuendos, which garnered many praise from religious groups and conservative fans. Fans were overjoyed when she finally married Nick Lachey, and kept her virgin status till honeymoon night, in contrast to other pop princesses at the time such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Jessica Simpson currently is the official celebrity spokesperson for Operation Smile, a charity group that provides free reconstructive surgery for children with facial deformities. She recently sat in on an operation in Kenya to show her support, as well as supporting Operation Smile on Capitol Hill. She has also appeared as a spokesperson for the acne treatment Proactiv Solution
Her public image as a naive or ignorant person of low intelligence, fueled by her behavior on Newlyweds (which included questioning whether Chicken of the Sea tuna fish was chicken or fish, or refusing to eat buffalo wings because, as she stated, she did not eat buffalo), became fodder for ridicule and satire. In 2006 singer P!nk released a song called “Stupid Girls” which directly mocked Simpson; in particular a line, “Maybe if I act like that/flippin’ my blonde hair back/push out my bra like that” is delivered spoken-word in a fashion that emulates a spoken word section of Simpsons “Walking” cover. In the music video P!nk also mocks the music video for “Walking”. However, her mother claimed in an edition of Vanity Fair magazine that she has a 160 IQ.
Simpson also brought attention to herself on March 16, 2006, when she declined an invitation by President George W. Bush to appear at a Republican fundraiser to represent Operation Smile, because that group is non-partisan, and because Simpson preferred to keep her political views private. The decision was seen as a “snub” by some, such as GOP leader John Boehner.