Dallas-born Jessica Simpson started out as a heavily gospel-influenced teenage singer of contemporary Christian music, but before long her sheer starpower dictated a crossover to the secular world. In the late 1990s, Simpson became an enormously successful performer in the mainstream pop/dance realm. A couple of years later, an MTV reality series in which Simpson starred with her then pop-singer husband Nick Lachey (of 98 Degrees fame) made the photogenic young pop idol who said the darnedest things an even bigger household name.