What Ashlee Simpson Learned From Her Infamous SNL Lip Sync Fail

Two decades after that infamous Saturday Night Live lip syncing incident, Ashlee Simpson is revealing what she learned from the whole ordeal.

Take a nostalgia trip with us, won’t you?

Back in 2004 the singer was facing some vocal issues during her appearance on SNL — so bad she originally said she wasn’t going to go out and perform. The way she tells it, the crew convinced her the show must go on — and told her to go out there and lip sync. She danced around confidently onstage and got through her first performance of Pieces of Me with ease. But as the beat kicked in for the second song — accidentally a replay of the first — it was quickly revealed her vocals were pre-recorded. This left her to do an awkward dance while the band continued playing and she eventually stood there, not knowing what to do.

Ch-ch-check out the moment (below):

NEVER FORGET THAT TIME ASHLEE SIMPSON GOT CAUGHT LIPSYNCING ON SNL THEN DID AN IRISH JIG & CASUALLY WALKED OFF STAGE pic.twitter.com/jsmeYNWpkh

— elijah daniel (@elijahdaniel) December 2, 2015

Needless to say, it was a Saturday night that lives in infamy.

But it’s been a long time since the humiliation, 20 years now!!! And Ashlee is looking back this week on the latest epsiode of the Broad Ideas podcast, revealing what she took from that embarrassing moment. Most importantly? She told hosts Rachel Bilson and Olivia Allen she learned the importance of the word “no” that night:

“I’ve never talked about or said, but it’s like the other thing is, learning as a woman, when you say no or as an artist or a human or whatever, that day I said ‘I will not go on, I don’t care. I can’t speak.’ … [I remember thinking] ‘my band has never practiced this, this is not going to go well. I can’t do this.'”

In the end, the 39-year-old summed it up as simple as this: