This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Is that chicken skin what she has or tuna skin? No matter — either way, teen-pop teledimbulb Jessica Simpson knows which side her skin is buttered on.
The bonus DVD that comes with her third album In This Skin contains neither music videos nor interviews, but footage of Jessica and hubby Nick Lachey’s wedding, along with scenes from the first season of the Newlyweds series that rescued her faltering career. If she plans on keeping that career out of the dumper, she better have some tricks up her sleeve for the next few seasons — ’cause the tepid In This Skin sure isn’t going to get the job done.
Its 14 songs are nothing but your standard-issue soul-pop pal and high-tech hip-hop hokum, delivered with the usual overdose of moaning and purring and trilling and cooing that the MTV crowd seems to feels constitutes singing in the post-Mariah world. Then there are the lyrics, which pretty much centre around how much Jess loves Nick (as well she should; anybody else would have tossed her aside with her dirty laundry by the end of Episode 1). In the end, the most entertaining bits of the disc are the semi-literate liner-note dedications: “How could I let you go,” Jess asks Nick, “when you surround me inside out?” Is that, like, even possible — and are we talking with skin or without?
