Back on track

A year ago, Ashlee Simpson was too upset to get out of bed.

Despite a hit reality show and a chart-topping debut album, the scrappy singer couldn’t bear the backlash of a “Saturday Night Live” gig gone awry.

“I was feeling really weak, like being in bed and not wanting to get out, trying to stop feeling insecure about it,” confesses Simpson, who was caught using prerecorded vocal tracks instead of singing a song live.

“But I grew up a lot, and learned I have to find strength within myself,” she says.

Three weeks ago, she triumphed in her return to the “SNL” stage, performing songs from her new album, “I Am Me,” without a hitch.

And this week, the new CD entered the Billboard chart at No. 1 – just like her first album, “Autobiography.”

New songs like the brooding “Catch Me When I Fall” and the uplifting “Beautifully Broken” explore the aftermath of last year’s “SNL” debacle and the process of growing past her pain.

Simpson says her confessional tracks – which foray into rock, punk, dance and hip-hop – are her way of “standing up and saying I conquered this, and I am better than one mess-up. …

“We were in the middle of a war, and America took a 20-year-old girl and went crazy about that, ripping her apart,” she adds. “It was sad and embarrassing about America.”

From the start, some viewed Simpson’s rise – from sister Jessica’s backup dancer to full-fledged pop star – with skepticism.

“There was a sense that her music career was a caricature of a prefabricated, market-tested act coming down the assembly line,” says Jonah Weiner, associate editor at Blender magazine, which will feature Simpson on its December cover.

“But no one ever listened to the music, which is actually fantastic.”

Most of “I Am Me” comes straight from Simpson’s experiences.

“I tried to write exactly about what I was feeling and going through,” she says. “I am really honest with my fans. I’m human.”

However, she insists the CD’s first single, “Boyfriend,” is pure fiction – not about her alleged flirtation with Lindsay Lohan’s then-boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama.

“We are just really good friends,” she says of Valderrama (“That ‘70s Show”). “I found all of those rumors to be really funny. I laugh all that tabloid stuff off.”

Simpson, who used to date singer-songwriter Ryan Cabrera, says she is now “really single,” a fact she mourned earlier this month at her 21st birthday party in Las Vegas. While she won $500 at roulette, Simpson wished she could have had “someone there to celebrate with.”

Her favorite gift of the evening was a vintage, diamond-encrusted Rolex from Jessica. Though she has suffered from little-sister syndrome in the past, Ashlee says she’s through feeling inferior to Jessica (a struggle she sang about in the song “Shadow” on “Autobiography”).

“I am really confident now,” she says of her relationship with her sister. “As you get older, you become closer.

“Though,” she adds with a fiendish giggle, “I am sometimes still the brat little sister.”

After touring with her new album, Simpson will sift through possible movie roles, following up on her acting job in the recent indie film “Undiscovered.”

She also wants to work on Broadway, a dream she has harbored since childhood.

Until then, she will keep trying to prove her critics wrong.

“For me, honestly, no matter what you do, people will strive to take you down,” she says. “I think that all you can do is surround yourself with the people who love and support you.”