Composition
The title track, which was also the theme song to The Ashlee Simpson Show, opens the album by introducing Simpson, who sings "got stains on my t-shirt, and I'm the biggest flirt" and "if you want my auto, want my autobiography / baby, just ask me". The Village Voice review described the song as "wrist-pumping Joan Jett rock candy", but Stylus labelled the track "an age-old trope and a boring one at that". "Pieces of Me", a song about the comfort and happiness Simpson found in her relationship with Ryan Cabrera, has been characterised as a soft rock ballad with "stringy guitar riffs". "Shadow", described by People magazine as the "most personal song" on the album, is a slower tune in which Simpson recounts playing a lesser role to her sister when she was younger, but eventually finding her own identity.
The album continues with "La La", a song with sexual lyrics that Simpson has described as "tongue-in-cheek". One reviewer described "La La" as a "punk inspired, fast beat, screaming anthem". "Love Makes the World Go Round", which epinions.com described as having a "Duff vibe", talks about the disappointment of an ending relationship. "Better Off", which has been described as a "bubbly" song and as a "chunk of pop/rock goodness", and "Love Me For Me", which has been called "Joan-Jett-esque" and which Simpson has said is about "self-appreciation" both deal with contradictory feelings about relationships. The synth-driven "Surrender" follows with Simpson consenting to a breakup, with lyrics such as "you make your misery my company"; epinions wrote that it is on this track that Simpson sounds "most loose and carefree".
"Unreachable" combines a piano line and vintage Chamberlin sounds with lyrics dealing with regrets about rushing into a relationship. Simpson has described "Nothing New" as being about her frustration with an ex-boyfriend's "dramas", until she is ultimately "finished with him", while "Giving It All Away" encourages the listener to stand on one's own feet: "hold on to your life and don't give that away", Simpson said of the song. The album's closing track, "Undiscovered" (which Simpson has described as a favorite of hers), was written after her breakup with Josh, and is described by epinions.com as a song with "haunting strings" and "mellow guitars"; in the song, Simpson ponders what might have been in a lost pairing. Non-U.S. pressings follow with "Harder Everyday", and the United Kingdom edition adds "Sorry". The U.S. Wal-Mart edition of the album also included an access code to download a reduced-quality version of "Sorry" over the Internet.
Read more about this topic: Autobiography (Ashlee Simpson album)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Every thing in his composition was little; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)