Jessica Ann Simpson (born July 10, 1980) is an American singer, actress, and television personality who rose to fame in the late 1990s. She has achieved seven Billboard Top 40 hits, and has three gold and two multi-platinum RIAA-certified albums. Simpson starred with her then-husband Nick Lachey in the MTV reality show Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica
Simpson released her first single, "I Wanna Love You Forever", which peaked at on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2000. Soon afterward her major label debut album Sweet Kisses was released
Singing, TV and film star Jessica Simpson, a Texas native who is close friends with Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, hasn't let the mixed reaction to her foray into country music shake her faith in herself.
Simpson, who opens for Rascal Flatts on Thursday in Phoenix, is thrilled that her first country album, "Do You Know," topped the country charts and that she's finally found what she calls her natural voice as a singer and songwriter.
She has hit some bumps in the six months since the CD's release, including a shaky performance last month in Michigan, not-great airplay for her second and third singles, tabloid coverage of her romance with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and, most recently, her weight. But the latest concert reviews indicate Simpson, who has recorded two million-selling pop discs, is gaining confidence in performing before a new audience that views her with skepticism.
"It's important for country fans to know that I'm not just trying to come in and take their money for a CD," says Simpson, 28. "I wanted to prove that I'm doing something straight from the heart and . . . I completely made the jump to this type of music. It's a more organic way to express myself as a musician, and it's really the only way that I feel I can be understood as an artist."Simpson, who grew up hearing country classics everywhere in her home state, spent four months in Nashville with some of the city's top songsmiths, writing and recording "Do You Know," which also reached No. 4 on the pop charts.
"I didn't say, 'I'm going to make a country record,' " says Simpson, who counts Martina McBride, Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton among her favorite singers.
She jokes that when she turned in songs for one of her pop albums to her record label, "they said I was too country. So I guess as a songwriter, it's more natural for me to write country music."
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