Jessica in charge

Jessica Simpson isn't a pop star who plays her cards close to her vest, as the saying goes.

 The Texas-raised teen diva was candid about both her Christian spiritual views -- and her belief in abstaining from pre-marital sex -- while rising to fame two years ago with her album Sweet Kisses.

 She was also open about her well-publicized relationship with 98 Degrees member Nick Lachey.

 The relationship ended two months ago, but Simpson is still upfront about it. There are even remnants of it on her new album, Irresistible, on which Lachey co-wrote a pair of tunes, Forever In Your Eyes and To Fall In Love Again.

 "It's a very positive thing," Simpson, who turns 21 next month, said of the break-up during a Toronto visit to promote Irresistible yesterday. "I'm at a point in my life where I don't want to have to depend on anybody for anything. Everybody goes through it. I want to stand alone, try to hold my own self up instead of leaning on (Lachey) for strength."

 She did say that she still talks to Lachey, who's 27, on the phone every day. But she's footloose to follow up the moderate success of Sweet Kisses, which went gold in the U.S. and Canada (selling 500,000 and 50,000 copies, respectively) shortly after it came out in the fall of 1999.

 "I'm a lot more confident this time around," she said yesterday. "I really knew the direction that I wanted to go. Tommy Mottola, the CEO of Sony, and Donnie Ienner, the president of Columbia, hand picked every song with me."

 And, while Simpson could have been cynically viewed last year as a sort of Royal Crown Cola to Britney Spears' Pepsi and Cristina Aguilera's Coke, she's stayed out of the diva wars with the intention of emerging in her own right.

 "I look at my career as a marathon more than just a sprint," she said. "You can't avoid the comparisons (to Spears and Aguilera), even though we can sit and laugh about it. I don't hear 60-piece orchestras on Britney Spears' record, and Christina Aguilera hasn't worked with (producer-songwriter) Rodney Jerkins. I tried to do stuff on this album that would really differentiate me from them.

 "If I feel like it's time to grow up, my music's going to grow up with me. I recorded my first record when I was 17 years old. On this record, there's a lot of stuff that's more edgy and more mature. I've grown. I feel like an adult. I still have young fans who want someone to look up to, but I want to reach out to an older audience."

 Simpson is also sporting a more mature image now, with shorter skirts and tighter-fitting garb to go with it.

 Still, she said, spirituality remains "the centre" of who she is.

 "I don't have to have songs that talk about religion, I don't have to have spiritual songs to be a positive role model. People are going to get that through my interviews or just through me chatting with them through fan-mail. There are ways of encouraging people." (More on: Jessica Simpson).

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