After she bumbled into that lip-syncing episode on “Saturday Night Live” last fall, Ashlee Simpson became the poster girl for everything wrong with popular music.

Things have changed since then. Simpson has become something of the Martha Stewart of the pop world: a scapegoat who got caught and punished for doing something others have done much more flagrantly.

Monday night Simpson headlined a show that drew about 1,900 fans to Memorial Hall, and the obvious answer to the obvious question is: No, she didn't fake the vocals or anything else (except maybe some enthusiasm for being in Kansas City, Kan.).

Instead she sang everything live and along the way sounded like several other females who sing heavy-rock songs: Alanis Morissette, Tracy Bonham, Pat Benatar and Courtney Love.

Simpson has only one album's worth of material to perform, so her show was short. I'd say it was expectedly short, except that tickets cost around $45 a pop, which usually means you'll get more than an hour's worth of music from the headliner. Not tonight.

She opened with the title track from her album, “Autobiography,” a loud and hard pop song built for her voice, which is average in about every category. A few times her five-person band was so loud it nearly devoured Simpson's voice. She makes a better singer than a dancer, though. Her “moves” were limited to jogs, skips and goofy off-kilter struts across the stage. Overall she comes off as a TV actress playing the role of a rock singer, competently.

She changed the pace twice. About halfway through, she and her two guitar players took seats on stools for a brief “acoustic/unplugged” set. A few songs later she did serviceable/generic renditions of three songs, including two that were popular before she was born: “Brass in Pocket” by the Pretenders, “Call Me” by Blondie and “Burning Up” by Madonna.

After that, she made one of several exits/entrances, returning in a fedora and stiletto-heeled shoes and giving the opening to “La La,” her big radio hit, a cabaret flourish. Then she kicked off the shoes, tossed her hat aside and did the song straight (and barefoot), setting off the loudest explosion of screams, squeals and cheers all night.

The auditorium was less than two-thirds full, a bit of a surprise considering Simpson's songs are all over radio and her album has gone double-platinum (2 million sold). The crowd this evening was nearly all female, and all night they gave Simpson the kind of welcome that fan-club members typically give their favorite star: They laughed, applauded, cheered and sang along, on cue, in all the right places.

She ended with another burst of candied rock, “Pieces of Me,” choreographing a big sing-along at the end. Then she said thanks and goodbye and left.

No one appeared too disappointed about the brevity of the show. After all it was a Monday night, and most of this crowd had to get up early Tuesday morning for work or school or, in a few cases, day care.