The Jessica Simpson Conspiracy

In the last week, Jessica Simpson released her latest single and video, “A Public Affair.” The video is a portrait of a girls’ night out at a roller rink featuring Christina Applegate and Ava Longoria. The song is a bubbly pop diddy, with an all too familiar hook. Way too familiar. In fact, I know I’ve heard this song before — several times.




Going back chronologically, the song borrows liberally from Madonna’s “Sorry” from her 2005 Confessions of a Dance Floor.
Not only does it borrow heavily from the song, it comes dangerously close to cloning Madonna’s video for the same song.



But that’s not all. Madonna’s song borrowed heavily from Kylie Minogue’s “Love At First Sight” off of her 2002 comeback “Fever.”



“Love At First Sight” was the culmination of numerous dance hits, including “I Don’t Want To Fall In Love” by Jane Child (1989), “All Night Long (Touch Me)” by Cathy Dennis (1990) and “Touch Me” by Samantha Fox (1986).



Wait! It doesn’t end there.
All of those songs would not have existed without Madonna’s “Dress You Up” and “Into The Groove” from her 1984 mega-hit Like A Virgin. So Jessica Simpson and her producers ripped off Madonna, TWICE! Three times if you count the goofy roller skating theme.
And what’s with revisiting the ‘80s? I was there. It wasn’t that great. In fifty years no one is going to be talking about the musical significance of Kajagoogoo, spend days debating who was better - Duran Duran or the Thompson Twins, have a need to wear Izod shirts with the collar up, and no one will care that “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles was the first song ever played on MTV (by the way, happy birthday MTV, thanks for still playing videos at 3 a.m. It’s keeping all of us current. And Sway is dripping with journalistic integrity).
Back to Jessica Simpson. Jessica...I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re the less talented of the Simpson sisters, your “reality” show wasn’t interesting and ended exactly how everyone thought it would and you can’t act. You’re a trifecta of bad. The clock on my VCR is flashing 00:00 and it’s still more interesting than you.
And now you’ve reduced yourself to stealing from tired old retreads of bad ‘80s music? Speaking of clocks, your fame stopwatch is at 00:15:01. It’s time for you to end this charade and leave.

Videos courtesy of YouTube.