“It was a different era,” Simpson remarked about the intense criticism, emphasizing that losing her voice didn’t negate the fact that she wrote her own music.Ashlee Simpson-Ross is looking back on the overwhelming backlash she faced after her notorious Saturday Night Live appearance almost two decades ago. During a recent interview on the Pod Meets World podcast, she revisited the aftermath of the 2004 incident, in which a technical glitch caused her hit “Pieces of Me” to play prematurely—before she even began singing her second song, “Autobiography.”

Reflecting on the harsh public reaction, Ashlee told hosts Rider Strong, Danielle Fishel, and Will Friedle in the August 21 episode, “I think it’s a different era now. Back then, the bullying was insane.”

Just 20 years old at the time, Simpson became the first musical guest to walk off the SNL stage mid-performance. Flustered and unsure what to do once the wrong track cued, she resorted to an impromptu jig before exiting. She returned before the credits rolled to offer an explanation—though it did little to calm the storm of criticism.

“My band started playing the wrong song, and I didn’t know what to do, so I thought I’d do a hoedown,” she said live on air. “This is live TV. These things happen!”

Now 40, Simpson acknowledges how that moment came to define her in the public eye for years. “I felt like I had to constantly explain myself—‘But I perform every night! My fans know.’ I had to hold onto that internally,” she shared.

She also pointed out that having vocal struggles didn’t discredit her artistry. “Yes, I’ve had ups and downs like everyone else,” she said. “Just because I lost my voice doesn’t mean I didn’t write those songs.”

Simpson contrasted today’s media environment—where social media allows celebrities to control their narrative more directly—with the early 2000s, when one mistake could haunt a career indefinitely. “Back then, it felt like that one thing was on your shoulders forever,” she noted. “We had magazines, tabloids… today everything moves faster and feels more fleeting.”

This isn’t the first time she’s revisited the incident. Earlier this year, on the Broad Ideas podcast, she revealed she had actually lost her voice ahead of the show after discovering she had vocal nodules. She insisted she wouldn’t perform, but claims she was encouraged to lip-sync to pre-recorded vocals.

“I said, ‘I will not go on. I don’t care—I can’t speak,’” Simpson recalled. “My band had never practiced with a track. I knew it wasn’t going to go well. I felt trapped.”