When Jessica Simpson Said My Name
When Jessica Simpson Said My Name
In a bizarre marketing scheme, Jessica Simpson once released 500 versions of her song “A Public Affair.” Two decades later, they can't be found anywhere.
Catherine Sinow - a past contributor to this newsletter - reached out to me a few weeks ago with a mystery. In 2006, Jessica Simpson released her hit single “A Public Affair” with a curious marketing campaign. Over 500 different versions of the song were recorded with people’s names substituted in where she originally sang ‘baby.’ So, if you were named Adam, for example, you could buy the Adam-version of “A Public Affair”.
This fascinated me for a few reasons. First, it seemed like an insane thing to do. Second, it felt like something an artist might try today, albeit generated via artificial intelligence. Third - and most importantly - Sinow claimed you couldn’t find any of the personalized versions of the song online. Hundreds of recordings by a very famous artist wiped from the web. I’ll let her explain the rest.
The Quietest, Privatest Public Affair
Jessica Simpson was a household name in the early-2000s. On top of a handful of hit singles, she starred in the movie adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard in 2005 and the comedy Employee of the Month in 2006. Both movies got terrible reviews - and the Hazzard-attached music video for her cover of “These Boots are Made for Walkin'” drew controversy for its overtly sexual dancing - but Simpson was unavoidable.
At the same time, the hit reality TV series Newlyweds documented her marriage to 98 Degrees member Nick Lachey and its subsequent collapse. After their divorce, Lachey quickly started a relationship with MTV host Vanessa Minnillo while Simpson was savagely mocked by the media for her appearance and antics.
Given all of this, it's safe to assume that Simpson’s June 2006 single “A Public Affair” is about her life. It came out the day before she announced her divorce, is filled with lyrics like “All the cameras come out for a public affair,” and is accompanied by artwork featuring the star being accosted by a paparazzo camera flash. Nevertheless, the song is also about staying positive and enjoying life: “Do what you wanna do / Tonight the world does not exist.”
Shortly after the release of the song, Simpson put out an unusual album on iTunes and Yahoo Music. The album contained 500+ ‘personalized’ versions of the song, meaning that Simpson - or one of her backup singers - substituted a different name into each version where she previously sang ‘baby,’ the audio equivalent of those personalized keychains you might find at a rest stop.
The name list, decoded with the magic of data
I was able to scrape 498 of the names from a Wayback Machine archive of the song’s Yahoo Music page. Pages for certain letters were not archived, so I’ll only be speaking about the name data I was able to get, which is every letter except for F, I, N, O, P, V, W, Y, and Z. There were no versions recorded with names that begin with Q, U, or X.
The top 10 male and female names of every decade from the 1950s to the 2000s are all represented, except Madison, Ethan, and Jeffrey. For what it’s worth, ‘Jeff’ is present, though. But the list of names is also filled with oddities. There are multiple versions of names with different spellings, like Jaime and Jamie, Toni and Tony, and Shawna and Shauna. Presumably, these would be sung exactly the same.
There are also sets of names specifically associated with different countries and ethnicities. For example, there are three names associated with Black Americans: Ebony, Latasha, and Latoya. There are six that are of Spanish origin: Angel, Jesús, Jose, Juan, Miguel, and Raquel. There are three that call to mind both Italy and Spain: Antonio, Mario, and Ricardo. There are two popular in Central Europe: Johanna and Rolf. There’s also a name of Hebrew origin: Hiram.
On top of those, there were also 11 names that are extremely uncommon: Cubby, Buttahman, Tuma, Blythe, Clemens, Charity, Breeze, Jagger, Kimball, and Roulie. There was no explanation given for how these names were chosen, but I suspect some were inside jokes and shout-outs. For example, there is a personalized version for ‘Daisy’, the name of the dog that Nick Lachey gifted to Simpson. ‘Buttahman’ might be a reference to Darren ‘Buttahman’ Brin, a previous employee at MTV and BET. It also looks like there was a ‘Roulie’ at VH1 when the song was released.
Nevertheless, if we exclude gender-ambiguous names, 59% of the names in the personalized versions are typically associated with women. Given the song’s flirtatious lyrics, it’s possible to hear these as a bold declaration of LGBT+ visibility in a time where the issue was a heated battle in the USA. In all likelihood, it was just a marketing ploy, though.
What happened to the personalized versions?
Though there were some articles at the time that documented the personalized versions, they’re not very detailed. In fact, they all seem to be paraphrasing a press release that isn’t on the web. Regardless, the personalized versions were all pulled from the market not long after they appeared.
On an archive of Simpson’s website, you can see the personalized versions advertised on July 1, 2006. Within one year, Simpson had a new website where the personalized versions weren't mentioned at all. Though I’ve searched high and low, these versions have all been expunged from the internet. They aren’t listed on giant music repositories like Rate Your Music or Discogs. They also can’t be found on YouTube or Soulseek. Even when you seem to find a one - like this listing on Spotify for the ‘Victor’ version - the audio is just the regular track that says ‘baby.’ It’s like hundreds of recordings by a pop star have disappeared in two decades.
But people do look for them. On this obscure music forum, people brought up some of the weird custom names that they recall hearing personalized versions for, like ‘Breeze’ and ‘Buttahman.’ In 2021, a random Twitter user was also shouting into the void in search of personalized versions of “A Public Affair”.
I thought this might be some collective historical delusion until I came across a video made by musician Rod Kim. In this short clip, Kim recalls how he purchased a ‘Rod Personalized Version’ of “A Public Affair” in 2006. “I feel like this was a fever dream,” he recounts. “Rod was just version 425, so I’m sure there are plenty more.” Indeed, his version of the song he shows is labeled as ‘425’ in the track number column.
Lost media is not rare. In fact, over 70% of silent films have been lost. But in the age of the internet, you would think that it wouldn’t be as rare. The disappearance of hundreds of personalized versions of “A Public Affair” is a great example of how media can still be ephemeral.
But where else can I get things with my name on it?
Seeing as to how the personalized versions were pulled offline, we can assume that they weren’t especially successful. Maybe they bombed. But similar concepts have emerged before and since.
In the early-2000s, the Kid Hip company sold CDs with songs featuring “your child’s name.” I learned about them at art camp when I was eight when an instructor bought the ‘Rachel’ edition because three girls in our class were named Rachel. You could purchase versions with common names for babies in the 1990s, like Kyle, Danielle, Jake, and Ashley. Though the company seems to have gone out of business, you can still buy a wide variety of their products on Ebay.
Musician Matt Farley is known for spamming Spotify with terrible songs about anything you can think of with the hope that you accidentally stumble upon it via a common search term, click play, and earn him money. His project The Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over consists of 17 volumes of name-themed songs. They’re mostly titled “The [NAME] Song” and use the same jazzy backing track. He reportedly earns a good deal of money from these musical schemes.
Since 2016, the website Cameo enables anyone to pay celebrities to get a custom video message. One of the biggest musicians on the platform is Kenny G. For $375, he will personally say hello to you and play saxophone along to a pre-recorded backing track.
And in the past year, AI voice impersonation technology has made it easy to create songs “sung” by celebrities. On YouTube you can find AI covers with all sorts of mix-and-match gimmicks, such as Joe Biden and Donald Trump singing “I’m Blue (Da Ba Dee),” Hitler singing the same song, and SpongeBob characters singing various hits.
Despite the fact that we could recreate all of these versions of “A Public Affair” with AI technology, I’m also holding out for the real thing. In a way, I’m hoping this article is an invitation. If anyone out there wants to spend their personal time digging for these tracks, let me know. I’ll be standing by, waiting for my ‘Buttahman’ personalized version.
An Old One
"How Long" by Paula Toledo
2003 - Singer-Songwriter
In the early-2000s, songwriter Paula Toledo recorded a song called “How Long” and licensed it to a TV show and a TV movie. She never really thought about the song much after that. In fact, she never even released it commercially. What she didn’t know was that thousands of people online were searching for the “lost song” decades later.
A New One
"How Long" by Paula Toledo
2023 - Singer-Songwriter
As early as 2007, people were asking online about “How Long”. Some short clips of the track once surfaced on a Russian bootleg DVD menu, and over a period of 16 years, a small search party became devoted to finding the artist. The lilting pain in the singer’s voice reminded listeners of The Cranberries.
In December of 2023, someone followed a complex breadcrumb trail and found the song in a radio archive. After the initial shock of realizing she was a minor celebrity - in fact, there was an entire Reddit community dedicated to finding the song - Toledo embraced her fans and welcomed the attention. Talk about a best-case scenario.
Catherine Sinow lives in Oregon where she is studying to be a mental health counselor. Her writing typically focuses on obscure and unusual topics in music. You can find her last contribution to Can’t Get Much Higher here and the rest of her work on her website. She also recommends this story about how Jessica Simpson almost lost her own name.
If you want to write for Can’t Get Much Higher and are reading this in your email browser, just reply with a pitch. If you’re reading on my website, feel free to pitch me at cdallarivamusic [at] gmail.
Pretty cool....and amazing, Chris! I had no idea, but then, the number of things about Ms. Simpson I'm completely unaware of number in the millions, I'm proud to announce! As it usually does in matters of 21st-century recording curiosities, my mind went to records, and the "what if Artist A, say, records 500 personalized singles in 1978"?
I don't suppose the very notion would ever occur to a vinyl-era artist to begin with, but even if it had, I'm not convinced the labor outlay would be deemed prohibitive...the extra studio time and materials would simply be passed along to the consumer, and my personal recording of Bon Jovi singing just to me, "You Give Love a Brad Name," would simply cost me a tidy $500.00 + 35c shipping (hey, it's the '80s)!
Beyond that, my mind immediately went to the unusual reach-your-fans notion of Todd Rundgren, who, in 1973, inserted a post card in copies of his LP, "A Wizard, A True Star." I got a copy, and sent in the post card. The promise (which he came through on)? "Send in the card, and your name will be on my next album."
As soon as I received my copy of 1974's "Todd" double album, I looked all through it, and came across a massive black and white poster! Unfold it, and it's a replica of the color front cover, only Todd's image is made up of tiny print of all the hundreds of thousands of names that were sent in! All together (and seen from a distance), they merge to look like the cover shot! https://www.facebook.com/toddrundgren/posts/d41d8cd9/2673989732620354/
Lean in and look closely, and you'll be able to find your name.....somewhere! I was somewhere in a lock of hair just off his right ear!
Beat that, Jessica!
Fascinating topic! My mom tells me that when I was a kid we had a VeggieTales CD where Bob and Larry would address me by my name, Darius.