Ashlee Simpson is ready to return to the scene of the crime. She is in talks with Saturday Night Live to host and perform on the show, just months after she was involved in a lip-sync scandal.

Simpson is in talks to perform on SNL on October 1, around the release of her sophomore Geffen album, I Am Me.

"It's not confirmed yet, but I want to do it," she told Billboard in her first interview about the new album.

"I've battled those demons. I'm ready to go back out and do it again."

Lest anyone has forgotten, Simpson, in support of her Geffen debut, Autobiography – which bowed at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 last year and has sold 2.9 million copies – appeared on the show last October.

As she prepared to sing her second song, a pre-recorded vocal track of her first performance erroneously began playing, revealing that she had been lip-syncing. Simpson, who said she had to use pre-recorded vocals because her acid reflux had left her unable to sing, was vilified for passing off her performance as live.

Not surprisingly, that event and the aftermath found their way onto the new album, which, like Autobiography, she wrote with Kara Dioguardi and John Shanks.

The tune Beautifully Broken most clearly references those events. "I've obviously fallen on my face before in front of a bunch of people, but I've learnt it's a beautiful thing and it's OK for people to be broken," she says.

"That song is about the moment where it's like, 'God, I don't even know if I'm going to be able to get out of my bed tomorrow.' But you have to get yourself to get up and continue."

Musically, the album is more aggressive than Autobiography and also shows the '80s influence of such female rockers as Joan Jett and Terri Nunn, which is surprising, because Simpson is only 20.

"I just love '80s music," she says. "It's just so light and fun, and that was a lot of what I wanted to do on this record."

Simpson knows that after her "SNL" snafu, some folks won't be willing to give her a second chance, but she left the ghosts of her naysayers outside the recording studio.

"The first two days, I was like, 'What am I gonna (do)' ... and then I was like, 'Who cares? I'm going to make a record that's true to myself ... I'm not afraid of criticism anymore, must I say?"