Only the debut of a cross-label smash could deny Ashlee Simpson's debut Geffin CD Autobiography a second week at #1 in the U.S.
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In the Nielsen SoundScan U.S. Album Sales chart (also known as the Billboard 200) for the week ended August 1, Autobiography racked up sales of over 269,000 units, bringing its two-week total to over 667,000 units -- two-thirds of the way to platinum status in just two weeks. However, the debut of the multi-artist compilation Now That's What I Call Music! 16 pushed Ashlee, the star of MTV's The Ashlee Simpson Show, down to second place, as Now! 16 sold 504,000 units for the fifth-best debut of the year.
We note that one of the songs featured in the Now! 16 collection is Jessica Simpson's 'Take My Breath Away,' so she can claim that she had a hand (however small) in knocking her sister out of the top spot. The relatively small 32% decline in sales for Autobiography, though, raises the prospect that it might still reach #1 again. After all, last fall Clay Aiken's Measure of a Man was #1 in its second week with sales of just 225,000 copies.
Ashlee told the Chicago Tribune that the sentiment expressed in her second single 'Shadow' (the follow-up to 'Pieces of Me') -- "stuck inside someone else's life" and "always second best" -- was a true reflection of her feelings while growing up as Jessica Simpson's little sister, especially after her father Joe moved the family to L.A. when Ashlee was 14 so that Jessica could be a star. Now, after Autobiography, Ashlee will never be second-best again.
Ashlee also expressed her satisfaction with her portrayal on The Ashlee Simpson Show. "I think it's been pretty accurate," she says. "Those are my best friends you see me with, and that's how my life is, and that's how it is making a record. It even shows the bad days in the studio. That's why I was so happy with it, because I don't look perfect."
Perfect, perhaps not. Just nearly perfect. But what else would we expect from a "reality" TV show executive-produced by her own father/manager?