Ashlee Simpson, (Jessica's "punkier" younger sibling) had a Milli Vanilli moment on SNL last night. I saw it happen, and it was pretty obvious. What interests me is not the fact that Simpson lip-synchs (no shit, sherlock,) but rather the general silence or lack of interest on the part of most media outlets. My interest isn't normative - i have no interest in whether or not "the people" should be up in arms over the revelation that some pop star most people over the age of 18 have probably never heard of is a fraud. What i am interested in is what this says about a)the current discursive status of "reproduction" as it pertains to musical consumption and "live performance," and b) both the current discursive framework and the historical trajectory of the trope of musical "authenticity" so central, in particular, to the consumption and reception of popular music in the 1990s and the construction of "the underground" and "indie rock" from the 1980s onward. (Remeber Reel Big Fish? Or Rob and Fab, for that matter?) I want to pose the possibly rhetorical question of what, precisely, the Simpson-SNL fiasco (or really, the lack thereof,) suggests about the ways in which popular music is consumed and produced in the post-napster era.

PS:
Let's leave off for the moment as a separate question Hip-Hop's privileging of "the real" as a separate question with its own valences and implications. 50-Cent's boasts about being shot nine times seem, to me at least, to address different anxieties and imagine a wholly different authenticity than that which was at stake in, oh, "Girl You Know It's True."