In the early ‘00s, Jessica Simpson was pretty much on the same caliber as the likes of Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez, who were all selling millions of albums with each new album release, along with high-charting singles and multiple tours.
Simpson’s debut album Sweet Kisses, which was released in November 1999, peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 200 yet it was still able to shift a whopping four million copies, with her follow-up Irresistible, in 2001, pushing another two million units to her overall sales.
Her most successful project came with the release in 2003, In This Skin, which not only landed Simpson her highest debut on the charts but also her highest-selling album to date.
The mother-of-three, who has since built a billion-dollar fashion brand, had become a force to be reckoned with in the music industry, but by 2006, her music career had taken a drastic turn for the worse following her divorce from ex-husband Nick Lachey - and things only continued to worsen.
What Happened To Jessica Simpson’s Music Career
While the 40-year-old appeared to have it all going for herself after the success of her third album, it appeared that taking part in MTV’s Newlyweds reality show ended up having quite the effect on Simpson’s brand and overall wellbeing.
The show, which premiered in August 2003 and ran for three seasons until March 2005, followed the marriage of Simpson and her then-husband Nick Lachey, and while Newlyweds became one of the highest-rated series on the network, having a camera crew in her home at all times eventually took a toll on her relationship.
During the show’s heyday, the With You singer was stereotyped for being a “dumb blonde” for making the infamous comparison between chicken and tuna when she asked Lachey: "Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken... by the Sea' [sic].”
The ex-couple were rumored to have shared plenty of arguments behind the scenes that never aired on the show, which Simpson admitted to in an interview with Sunrise in February 2020.
“I don't think the reality show is what destroyed us by any means [but] by the end of shooting... we weren't even talking to each other,” she said.
“We wanted to get the cameras out because we didn't even understand who we were as a couple anymore because we had been edited so much throughout the seasons.
“You got it authentic for sure in the first two, but the third one we were definitely trying too hard to be the perfect couple.”
By December 2005, Lachey and Simpson were ready to move on as divorce papers were filed just before Christmas.
While the Dukes of Hazard actress would pour her heart out in her fifth studio album A Public Affair in 2006, it appeared that the public had clearly taken sides as the record only sold 500,000 copies in the US and failing to produce any commercial hits.
Simpson said she was proud of the project because she recorded most of the songs while going through her marital problems with Lachey, making the album all the more personal for her, yet it still didn’t spark interest enough from fans to purchase a copy.
For her sixth album in September 2008 with Do You Know, Simpson changed lanes and focused her attention on creating country music, which was an interesting career direction for the songstress, but the record also underperformed on the charts.
After that Simpson released her final album to date, Happy Christmas, in November 2010 before stepping away from music entirely.
With the release of her memoir, Open Book, in January 2020, the blonde beauty released six new songs exclusively with the purchase of her accompanying audiobook.
It was refreshing to step back in the recording studio to record the tracks, she told Entertainment Tonight, as it also allowed her to refrain from carrying on with her addiction to alcohol.
"The music is actually everything that inspired me to get sober and write the book. Because I realized when I was going down into my studio, even though I was in the comfort of my house, I had to drink to numb the pain that I was about to experience to write.”
"Songwriting takes me to an honest place, and honestly, I was in a dark place," she explained in her book. "I just didn't know it until the words came out of me."
The six new songs that were released with the memoir, however, have not given fans any indication that Simpson will want to return to the music industry permanently, nor has she made any mention of wanting to record an eighth studio album just yet.