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Next single from Nick: "This I Swear" (released 9/29/03)
Album release: "SoulO" (released 11/11/03)

11/02/03

1st Anniversary

Nick and Jessica spent their first wedding anniversary on Sunday (October 26) in romantic Atlantic City, New Jersey. Simpson performed Saturday at the Xanadu at the Trump Taj Mahal on Saturday, October 25, and also taped some segments for Donald Trump's new NBC reality show, The Apprentice, this past weekend.

The stars of MTV's reality show Newlyweds also recently visited Ocho Rios, Jamaica, where they celebrated their first year of wedded bliss and joined other celebrities at a St. Jude Hospital children's benefit held at the Royal Plantations Resort & Spa.

While looking back on the year, Simpson said that she had a stress-free wedding day: "You know, it's hard not to get stressed out, but I was the most relaxed bride, and I think that made me enjoy it so much more. I remember every single detail of my wedding day. A lot of people have to go back and watch their wedding video to remember things because they were so stressed out, and I remember everything. I just let myself have fun--I put the stress in other people's hands."

As for what gifts the couple that has everything wants for their first anniversary, Nick told Access Hollywood, "We decided for our first anniversary we're getting a new bed for our bedroom--that's going to be our big anniversary present." Jessica added, "For your first year of marriage, the traditional thing to buy him/her is paper. I figure wood--you can make paper out of that, it's close enough."

New peak for viewers

Nearly 3 million caught Tuesday's final episode of Newlyweds. MTV has ordered more but the show won't rev up again until January, to give Nick time to try to teach his lovely bride that buffalo wings aren't actually buffalo, Chicken of the Sea isn't really chicken, and indulging in chronic belching and flatulence on national TV isn't necessarily a great career move, even if it's only cable. Of course, then the show will have lost most of its charm.

VH1 Big in '03 Awards

Nick and Jessica will be presenters at this second-annual pop culture celebration, which will tape November 20 at the Universal Amphitheatre near Los Angeles.The show, which will air November 30 at 9 p.m., honors the biggest noisemakers of 2003 in entertainment, news, politics and gossip.

Jessica and Nick swarmed with endorsement deals

So who's the dumb one? Jessica Simpson says "platy-mu-pus" instead of "platypus" - but she certainly knows where to sign a deposit slip. Just yesterday, the 23-year-old star of MTV's "Newlyweds" announced a deal with Britney Spears' merchandising company that should net her more than $3 million in the next few months alone.

This week, she and her husband, Nick Lachey, will go into production on the second season of "Newlyweds," which hits the air in January. And next week, she'll be on the cover of Rolling Stone, as a housewife in stiletto heels, holding a Swiffer. Until this summer, the former gospel singer was just one of a dozen almost-famous Britney wannabes. But on the heels of her hit TV show, she's the talk of Hollywood, and fortune is bound to follow.

"The money is just kicking in for her," says Dell Furano, CEO of Signatures Network, which also licenses products for Ozzy Osbourne, The Beatles and Kiss.

"Ever since we announced the deal, the phone has been ringing off the hook from companies who want Jessica for endorsements."

A furniture company wants Simpson and her husband to endorse a line of chairs and tables for newlyweds. A bank wants them for a newlywed credit card. And there will most likely be cell phone covers, posters, calendars and T-shirts in time for the holidays - if the money's good enough.

"We don't recommend anything to Jessica unless it means at least a million net to her," says Furano, who is especially excited about a line of greeting cards that would feature the "wit and wisdom of Jessica Simpson." It was Simpson's hilariously airheaded quotes, of course, that made "Newlyweds" the buzz show of the season. In one episode, Lachey offered her some Buffalo wings, and she told him she didn't eat buffalo. Of course, her most famous head-scratcher was that Chicken of the Sea quote.

"Is this chicken what I have, or is this fish?" she asked Nick on one episode. "I know it's tuna, but it says chicken. By the sea."

The quote became a favorite around water coolers and in Internet chat rooms after Jessica said it - and now that, too, is paying off. Last week, Simpson met with Chicken of the Sea managers at their San Diego headquarters, and even sang the company's old jingle, "Ask any mermaid you happen to see/ what's the best tuna, Chicken of the Sea."

Contrary to the rumors, Simpson has yet to sign as Chicken of the Sea's new spokesperson - although she'd like to. "I really want to be the mermaid on their can," she says. "You'd think they'd want that after their sales went up 10 percent."

For the moment, that's not likely, says Don George, the company's senior vice president for marketing, who instead attributes the recent spike in sales to "a quality control initiative." "She's helped a great deal in introducing the brand to kids," he says, "but I don't think she'll be our spokesperson."

His hand may be forced, however, because Furano has been fielding calls from other tuna companies interested in signing Simpson. "Two different companies have sent Jessica cases of tuna fish to try out," he says.

And Simpson admits her loyalty goes only so far. "If Chicken of the Sea doesn't want me, I'll do Starkist," she says. "I know tuna will be involved in there somewhere."

Power couples

Last month, Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey shot from B-list to A-list celebrity status. Need proof? They were guests on "Larry King Live" last week. They're on the cover of the Oct. 27 issue of Us Weekly. And "Saturday Night Live" has paid homage to them recently with a skit. The couple did it by showing the public what their first year of marriage looks like on MTV's "Newlyweds," one of the network's most popular programs.

Before "Newlyweds," Nick (a member of the boy band 98 Degrees) and Jessica (a solo pop artist) were hardly mainstream stars; their fan base consisted mostly of preteens. Thanks to "Newlyweds," they've got everyone from Larry King's viewers to young marrieds talking about them.

They're not the first - and they won't be the last - couple to use their relationship to get ahead in the business. Remember Liz and Dick? Mia and Frank? But what is it about the power of two that makes us suckers for buying magazines, flipping on the TV, begging for more?

"People have a tendency to doubt; they ask if the relationship is a (public relations) thing," says Caroline Schaefer, senior editor at Us Weekly. "It's nice to get reassurance that they are just like us. You don't get to know them by seeing a concert or watching them in a movie. But reading about them in a magazine or seeing them on TV shows gives a window into their personality, and that's what we crave. People are especially interested in love stories. It's why relationship covers of women's magazines sell so well."

The past

The horrors of 9/11 brought newlyweds Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey back together after a nasty split, because the atrocities made the pop star realize how selfish she was. The couple wed last year when Jessica tracked down her ex and fought to get him back after their split the year before.

She recalls, "I was really stressed out about my career and I was seeking encouragement from him. He couldn't offer me that at the time. I resented him for that. At that point in my life, I was very, very selfish. I had the record label thinking that my album was going to be the biggest thing in the world.

"I was on a huge diet, making my body look amazing, and everyone was patting me on the back and loving me, telling me how great I was. But it was the worst time of my life - I was separated from my family. I was separated from the love of my life. I was separated from myself. It took September 11 to make me realize that. I needed a big awakening."

10/14/03

Nick and Jessica on Oprah

Nick and Jessica were on Oprah yesterday. Jessica was the only one to perform on the show...why? They are definitely a cute, but interesting, couple. I only caught the last portion of the show, where there was some chatter of the song that she just sang and how the song is about Nick. Jessica's mother was on the show, and the obligatory discussion about how she always wants a maid ensued.

watch a clip of the show

10/13/03

Jessica about Newlyweds
[from MSNBC]

The reigning rich ditz, pop star Jessica Simpson, and husband, Nick Lachey, just signed on for a second season of MTV’s “Newlyweds.” Perhaps she wants a shot at atoning for the moment this year when she debated whether Chicken of the Sea is tuna or chicken. “I hate fish, so I didn’t understand why I liked this tuna,” Simpson tried to explain to David Letterman last week. “It doesn’t make any sense at all, I know.”

'Newlyweds': an unflattering portrait
[from Ft Worth Star Telegram]

The handsome young man stands with his beautiful new bride, enacting that age-old marital ritual - the recounting of his day's events. On this particular day, he has discovered a dead mouse in the swimming pool.

"It was all, like, stiff and rigor-mortised," he tells her.

"Riga-who?" she replies.

The camera moves in. The emotions are easily read on our hero's face. First, puzzlement, then amusement. And finally, the sinking horror that comes with this realization: I have married the stupidest woman on Earth.

This is one of the many sublime moments on a show full of them: "Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica," MTV's reality show following the lives of the recently hitched pop singers Nick Lachey (of 98 Degrees fame) and Jessica Simpson.

Only six episodes old, the show is fast turning into the most valuable cultural document of our young century: It's both a study in our modern celebrity obsessions and a scathing attack on the celebrities who fuel them. Nick and Jessica are young, gorgeous, spectacularly wealthy, enviably privileged - and, ultimately, two gullible fools who have unwittingly given us front-row seats to the train wreck that is their celebrity marriage.

What's so terrific about "Newlyweds" is that it is a very contemporary gloss on a decades-old genre: the warts-and-all anatomy of married life. In 1973, director Ingmar Bergman made "Scenes From a Marriage," a six-part television miniseries that followed a fictional married couple as they tore at, and finally tore apart from, one another.

"Newlyweds" is just like the Bergman model, except it's about really silly people, leading very shallow lives. Watch Jessica get mad at Nick for checking out other women's backsides - women who happen to be the wafer-thin dancers hired to appear in his new music video. Watch Nick blow up at Jessica for ruining his afternoon golf outing by complaining of her golf swing, "My boob gets in the way."

Oh, to have these people's problems! Except that's the brilliant joke here - you wouldn't want these people's problems, not for a multimillion-dollar record contract.

The more we see, the more we understand this relationship to be built on a foundation of ego and image. There is only token affection expressed between the two newlyweds; more often, you simply see Nick irritated and bored with Jessica - grateful, for instance, to be able to escape to a Playboy Mansion party and to turn off his cellphone from Jessica's incessant nagging.

You also see Nick and Jessica allowing envy and competitiveness to consume them, without even realizing it. Take the moment when a father and daughter ask Jessica for her autograph while she and Nick dine at Tony Roma's Ribs. Nick tries to make light of the fact that no one wanted his autograph, but a hint of real resentment flashes across his face, and it leaves a nasty aftertaste.

When you measure a marriage by how famous it is going to make you, how can the less-famous partner be anything but enraged at the other? This isn't a marriage so much as a public relations campaign - a point brought home by the omnipresence of the cameras in their home, by the very existence of the show.

This is what Bergman did. He showed how two people's goals in a relationship can vary and how a collection of small resentments can expand and destroy like a cancer.

But in the end, "Newlyweds" isn't an attack on marriage so much as it is an attack on the institution of modern celebrity. Following the success of "The Osbournes," any number of famous folk thought they could cash in by having the cameras obsessively study their private lives. What Nick and Jessica could never have expected was that the cameras would turn on them.

So we relish Jessica's whiny, spoiled-brat inability to pick up after herself. We delight at Nick having to put up with her pestering him about how he spends too much time with his brother Drew. Mostly, we laugh at what spectacularly stupid thing Jessica will come up with next. She doesn't realize that "Chicken of the Sea" is not actually chicken. She always thought "platypus" was pronounced "platymapus." She thinks buffalo wings are made from, well, buffalo.

This mean-spiritedness feels deserved - and, for the ordinary Joes like us watching the show, it is extraordinarily cathartic.

Not just because Nick and Jessica achieved success in spite of their rather dubious singing talents. And not just because we live in a world that heaps limitless rewards upon the dumb, the young and the beautiful. But also because these two had the hubris and the vanity to think that we would be interested in seeing every moment of their lives on television.

Well, yes, we are interested in their lives, but there's nothing to be ashamed of. That's the genius of the show. Instead of making us feel cheap about our celebrity thirst, "Newlyweds" lets us feel haughty and superior. It's called eating your star-gazer cake and then getting to shove it right back into the celebrity's face.

10/12/03

SNL

Last night's Saturday Night Live had Justin Timberlake doing a spoof on the Newlyweds show...with him impersonating none other than...Jessica Simpson. And of course, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the spoof was on her now famous "stupid lines" plus a few more added up for posterity.

Read the transcript here: SNL 10/11/03

Favorite Moment

Us Weekly quotes Nick commenting on his wife Jessica saying, "My favorite moment with Jess is when she's laying on the couch, hair in a ponytail, sweatshirt on, and we're watching the game together... She really is beautiful. I overachieved."

Nick and Jessica in Louisiana

Nick and Jessica will be featured at MTV's Homecoming Weekend at Tulane University. The show is for this coming weekend (Oct 18-19). The pair have already shot their spot on campus, where they help a Tulane student find a homecoming date.

10/10/03

"This I Swear" - Radio Play

Last week, "This I Swear" was released to radio, and 17 radio stations reported adding the song to their play list, making it among the top 5 songs added that week. However, the song still has not been able to crack the top 50 songs on pop stations nationwide according to Radio and Records.

It's my opinion that Universal Records should consider breaking the adult contemporary radio market, because it could be a big hit, just like "I Do (Cherish You) did well in that market.

Nick Lachey to present...

Nick had just been added to the list of presenters at the 2003 American Music Awards on November 16.

Jessica Back for More Buffalo

[from E!]

Who knew that watching MTV could make you feel smarter? If you are aware that Chicken of the Sea is, in fact, tuna fish, that platypus is not pronounced "plat-a-ma-puss" and that buffalo wings are not made of buffalo, well, you're a genius compared to Jessica Simpson, star of MTV's Newlyweds.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t

And now you can continue to pit your wits against the sexy simpleton. MTV has picked up a second 10-episode season of Newlyweds.

The reality show chronicles the daily life of Simpson and her hubby, Nick Lachey, as they struggle with the challenges and obstacles of everyday life in the land of the rich and famous.

It's so hard to be a 23-year-old pop-star bride, who's rich, gorgeous and married to a doting husband, who finds even your prolific burping and farting adorable. The things you have to figure out on your own these days...Why on earth aren't there special Yellow Pages listings for maids for celebrities?

Luckily, she has found a partner marginally brighter than herself to explain such challenges as the garage-door opener.

Formerly one-fourth of boy band 98 Degrees, Lachey has been doing his own laundry for years now and knows to look at his credit-card receipts before signing them. He can shake his head indulgently when his wife mistakes fish for chicken and chicken for buffalo; he knows the difference.

The baffling rhetoric displayed on Newlyweds somehow makes it compulsively watchable; last week's installment averaged 2.5 million viewers. The first season's finale will air on Oct. 21, five days before the couple's one-year anniversary. Here's hoping the show's IQ won't go up as Lachey and Simpson enter their second year of wedded bliss and second season of unintentional hilarity.

On TV, Jessica's a hit, but her CD's a flop

[from the internet]

Mixed Media: Jessica Simpson has a hit series and a sinking CD.
Looks aren't everything. Consider the latest album from Dallas Cowgirl look-alike Jessica Simpson.

The singer has a hit MTV "reality" series, "Newlyweds," which tracks her relationship with hubby - and fellow cutie-pie pop star - Nick Lachey. But that hasn't stopped Simpson's third CD, "In This Skin," from taking an ugly turn.

Just before the TV series began, the album made its debut at an impressive No. 10 on Billboard's Top 200 Album list. Since then, the show's ratings have soared. "Newlyweds" is drawing an average of 2.4 million viewers each week, with more of them in the coveted 12-to-34-year-old group than any other cable show in its time slot can claim, including "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

But Simpson's album has plummeted. After just five weeks, it has flopped to No. 62 in Billboard, moving a tepid 16,087 copies in the last week. The show's hook has become Simpson's somewhat naive approach to the factual side of life.

In one episode, she allowed us to believe she thought buffalo wings came from actual buffaloes. In another, Simpson paid what some might put down on a used car for two pieces of lingerie, and didn't notice the tab until later.

While this sort of thing may make viewers titter - it has become a running joke on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" - it has made music fans take her about as seriously as they do Anna Nicole Smith.

The problem hasn't been lost on Lachey's record company. Originally, Universal was set to release Lachey's debut solo work ("Soulo") in mid-September. Now it has decided to put the album off until Nov. 11, the better to hedge its bets and build momentum for the single, "This I Swear."

While Simpson's music plays a minor part in the show, Lachey's "Swear" opens every episode and serves as its theme song - a move that now looks pretty darn smart.

A delicious marital discord
Stars squabble on MTV's 'Newlyweds'

from the Boston Globe

When teen pop was at its candy-coated zenith -- or apocalyptic saturation point, depending on your viewpoint -- a few years ago, singer Jessica Simpson and boy band 98 Degrees always seemed the least interesting of the whole heavily manufactured and marketed lot.

Arriving late in the teen pop tsunami -- Simpson after Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and 98 Degrees following the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync -- both acts never rose above what they so clearly were, namely even blander copies of concepts that weren't especially original to begin with. (Quick! Name a song by either Simpson or 98 Degrees.)

So when this turn-of-the-millennium cultural blip inevitably petered out, it seemed obvious that while Justin Timberlake of 'N Sync and Aguilera might stay afloat in the shifting tide of public opinion, Simpson and 98 Degrees would probably be washed away into the record store cutout bins.

And then, "Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica" premiered last month on MTV.

Nothing Jessica or her husband, Nick Lachey, former lead singer of 98 Degrees, did as musical performers was as entertaining as watching them navigate the minefield of a new marriage. After dating for three years, Nick and Jessica married last October, and six months into their marriage agreed to have an MTV crew film their newly conjoined lives.

Before the show began airing Tuesday nights at 10:30, it seemed as if it might be a sickeningly sweet jaunt with Ken and Barbie in their dream house, but the reality has been something deliciously different. On display each week is the hilariously fitful union of Jessica and Nick, with all the bickering, pettiness, icy silences, insecurities, and slack-jawed cluelessness intact. While it's too early to say if this is an ill-fated marriage, it is, at least for the moment, an ill-fitting one. Here, under the harsh glare of lights and cameras, they're discovering the nasty little fact that the person you find yourself living with often bears no resemblance whatsoever to the person you fell in love with.

In the early episodes, those discoveries have come fast and furious, especially since the couple did not live together before getting hitched. After moving into their Los Angeles McMansion, Nick, 29, suddenly realizes that his beautiful blond bride is a high-maintenance brat and an absolute slob who can't comprehend, among other things, the notion of hangers and closets for her clothes. (The house is always in disarray, including a perpetual pile of clothes in the foyer.) In her own defense, Jessica, 23, maintains that she's been spoiled by her parents, pampered by handlers since age 14, and has never had to do anything for herself.

From Jessica's perspective, Nick's main faults are spending too much time cleaning the house (Is this a bad thing?), watching sports, and hanging out with his younger brother Drew, also a former member of 98 Degrees. A classic exchange came with Jessica knee-deep in her daily snit. Nick whispered to his brother, "It's moments like this when I'm glad I don't own a gun, 'cause I would shoot myself." Without missing a beat, Drew said, "Why would you shoot yourself?" (The wisecracking Drew is like a cross between a Greek chorus and Rhoda Morgenstern.)

In between, they squabble about whether to hire a housekeeper, Jessica's jealousy, especially when Nick was auditioning female dancers for an upcoming show, and frankly, everything else. Here, the couple says "Screw you" to each other more often than "I love you." And it all unfolds with a fascinating banality. This is something MTV, the modern pioneers of so-called "reality TV," began perfecting with "The Osbournes." For all their money and fame, what made that family so watchable was how utterly average they were. It was always more interesting watching Ozzy as a befuddled middle-age father at home than as a rock god on stage at Ozzfest.

This is something most other reality shows never get right. They're always about fashioning scenarios to spark interest. But reality, as served up on TV, isn't about eating bugs on deserted islands for cash and prizes or having your life remade by gay fashionistas. It's arguing about bills, idiosyncrasies, and why tuna is called confusingly (at least for the somewhat dim Jessica) "Chicken of the Sea."

From Ralph and Alice Kramden to Tony and Carmela Soprano, the machinations of married life are usually captivating. But since Nick and Jessica are a real couple, the stakes, too, are real. Unlike Ozzy and Sharon, they don't have 20 years of marriage behind them -- they're making the whole marvelous mess up as they go along. And for viewers, it's engrossing TV because we're either watching the awkward moments Nick and Jessica will conquer and laugh about with their kids and grandkids some day, or seeing first-hand evidence of those "irreconcilable differences" that often lead to divorce court.

The US can't get enough of Newlyweds

Asking if pop star Jessica Simpson is really as stupid as she appears to be on MTV's latest reality hit Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica is beside the point.

It's like asking if Ozzy is really as burnt as he seems on The Osbournes.

What is important is that the comically inane interplay between Simpson and husband Nick Lachey of the boy band 98 Degrees is building serious buzz in the most competitive time period on cable: 10 pm Tuesday. Facing off against two other red-hot series this week — FX's Nip/Tuck and Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy — MTV's Newlyweds at 10:30 pm beat both, garnering 1.6 million viewers in the 18-34-year-old demographic. Interestingly, Newlyweds is a close second to Nip/Tuck with the advertiser friendly 18-49 crowd, drawing 1.9 million viewers compared to 2.3 million for the FX series. Somewhere, someone is looking at how well all these shows are doing and preparing a pitch for a plastic surgery makeover show for gay newlyweds.

Nick Lachey/Jeff Timmons News Archive

Summer 2003

98 Degrees News Archive

98° News Archive (up to April 2003)
98° News Archive (August - September 2001)
98° News Archive (June - August 2001)
Past 98° News Archive (till June 2001)

Other stuff (not online currently, sorry)

98° in Cincinnati!
massive special August update

We've found an interview with Jessica Simpson where she talks about her relationship with Nick...click here to read the interview

Plus, we've added more clips of "Where You Are" to the videos page. And to round out the entire theme for today's update: photos of Nick and Jessica: photo 1 photo 2

Watch a clip of 98° from the Nickeloden Kid's Choice Awards! "Jeff, Drew and Justin from 98 Degrees describe their plans to make fun of bandmate Nick Lachey during his KCA duet with Jessica Simpson." note: you need Real Player (click here for clip)