Ashlee Simpson is on the phone, and she's talking - actually speaking! - about music, magazines and television, from "7th Heaven" to "The Ashlee Simpson Show" to "Saturday Night Live."

Of course her music, which is rooted in pop-rock and not the gummy-pop of her famous sister's repertoire, is in the mix.

"I never saw myself doing the music Jessica does," said Simpson. Her taste skews more to Maroon 5 than Radiohead, but she still has a steady sense of quality, even if it doesn't show up in her own overproduced music, which is more saccharine than substantial.

"I love Björk, and I've always loved Fiona Apple," Simpson said. "I also like Hole. Courtney Love is great . . . crazy, but that's her thing - and I think she's an amazing guitar player."

The 20-year-old Simpson, with her baby doe eyes and her bee-stung (or at least collagen-filled) lips, is better suited for magazines than she is music.

Her February Cosmo cover had her looking like a very young Demi Moore in a flirty, low-slung red dress, and the cover devotes more space to her cleavage than it does the headlines - "Beyond Kama Sutra" and "The Power of Pre-Sex." She also adorns March's Teen People cover, which shared the newsstand with the Cosmo outing, and the picture is more Nickelodeon jailbait than rock star.

Still, the magazine covers prove that Simpson's cross-generational appeal is ubiquitous.

"It's really cool, because getting to shoot the cover of Cosmo or Allure is an honor for someone like me," Simpson said. "It shows that there's a wide range of people who are interested in what you're doing."

Ultimately, television circa 2005 is the medium where Simpson works best.

It's all about the unreal reality of MTV's "The Ashlee Simpson Show" and the culture of artists launching careers from The WB's "7th Heaven" via a hot music video with newly dyed black hair and a faux 'tude.

At least the flaws still shine through occasionally - thanks to the publicity free-fire zone that is live TV - although Simpson's massive flub on "Saturday Night Live" only implanted her deeper into the public consciousness and made her an even larger icon.

But for what cause is she an icon, and at what cost does that status come?

To some, she represents a multitalented object of envy, the woman who has it all and is only made more human by an unfortunate "oops" on live TV. To others, she's the problem with the American entertainment culture, the talent-free product of a strange celebrity-obsessed family bowing to the needs of a sad, celebrity-obsessed culture.

Either way, Simpson is not thinking about it too much.

"It really hasn't changed anything," she said of October's "SNL" lip-syncing flub. "Things happen, and for me, it's in the past, and I moved on, and I have this tour coming up and, the way that I looked at it, it was just something that happened in my life."

Did she learn from the experience, which left her embarrassed, clueless and jigging in front of a studio audience and millions watching in their living rooms?

"There will be no lip-syncing at all on this tour," Simpson said. "It's called 'Autobiography Live!' "

Moreover, did we learn from the experience?

It's no surprise she was lip-syncing, but the aftermath - her dad playing cleanup with messy excuses and Simpson actually singing live at the Orange Bowl and getting booed for her efforts - was so ugly that we should have learned something, perhaps that Simpson wasn't born to sing.

Her album, "Autobiography," is a pop-rock hodgepodge that pays tributes to the great female singers of the '80s - badly. "Love Me for Me" isn't awful in its channeling of Pat Benatar, and its catchy hook makes for the best pseudo-rock track on the disc. "La La," the song that bombed at the Orange Bowl, is an addictive track that belongs on "Total Request Live" with its infectious screams and sophomoric dance-pop chants.

And that's it. Every other song on the disc is a waste of time and electricity. But if there's anything to be said for the album, it's that she co-wrote the entire thing with a team of songwriters.

"For me, rock is something I've always listened to - Blondie and the Pretenders and whatnot," said Simpson. "Rock is something I've really wanted to do, because a lot of the women had a lot of power, and they always had something to say."

So Ashlee Simpson has something to say? The Orange Bowl was indeed look-away bad, but her current tour could be must-see rich.