I did a double take when I read my own headline, and for good reason. I have no interest in Jessica Simpson, whether as sexpot, celebrity, singer, or actress. As I’ve said many times before on Popdose, I have a low regard for the thinly veiled peepshow that modern pop music has become. I do ask myself dumb questions like, “Why is Britney Spears’s Circus album doing so much better than her Blackout album? Is there a musical quality involved with the newer that is not on the older?”

I can only speculate on the answer. Both are annoying slabs of electropop that find Spears throttling an almost barbaric sexuality around like the #C chord. Both will probably be relegated to the pop culture scrap heap in a couple years, but the latter disc finds Spears more skinny and less crazy, purportedly. It is, apparently, okay to like Britney again now that she’s physically hot. That’s a broad brush I’m painting with, but as year passes into year, I am shocked again and again by the complete lack of nuance out there. I paint with the broad brush because the pop-music buyer of late only appreciates the broad canvas, pun intended.

Jessica Simpson may have been the broadest of all. Was she bright, feigning dumb because that was endearingly comical? Was she simple, handled by an ace staff of “people” starting with her father Joe, who has garnered a reputation for being a cold-blooded manipulator, machinist and in the eyes of some no more than a pimp turning his daughters out to the streets? Could she sing or not? Could she act or not? The answer, at least up until a few weeks ago, was that it did not matter. So long as she popped open her top and took the twins on tour, what she did came in a distant third.

There was outrage from some country music fans when she tried to wedge into the market. Who could blame her? First, of all the genres, country is notorious for the fierce loyalty of its fans. Unlike fickle pop and downright cutthroat hip-hop where you can be cast aside in the span of hours, not days, country fans will continue through the good and the bad times with equal fervor. Second, it’s a common refuge for artists on the waning edge of music careers in other styles. The only ploy more commonly utilized is the headlong rush to the Great American Songbook. The country gatekeepers saw Simpson as a carpetbagger, as someone who failed to hit the mark in her originally chosen arena, and decided to scratch off someone else’s lottery ticket. (more…)