Jennifer Lopez, This Is Me… Now

At 54, Jennifer Lopez is still a beauty icon. Call it those Puerto Rican genes, call it the best skincare and wellbeing regime money can buy, but defying age is part of her persona and accounts for some of the ongoing fascination with Lopez 33 years into her entertainment career (much appeal also comes from her fabulous performances).

Meanwhile, Lopez’s tumultuous love life has also kept her in the spotlight. As Variety noted, “It is Lopez’s performances in both screen and real-life rom-coms that have kept the 54-year-old current when many of her peers have long been sentenced to philanthropic work.” Ouch, and philanthropic work is not exactly washing dishes, but ok.

Lopez’s latest, three-pronged project is centred around new album This is Me… Now, alongside a musical film of the same name on Amazon Prime. It’s a sequel to her 2002 record This Is Me… Then, released while she was dating actor/director Ben Affleck, before their engagement was called off months later. Reuniting with Affleck in 2021 and marrying him in 2022, this album is an excavation of her romantic journey in the intervening years, finally leading her back to Ben. (The Dear Ben song off the 2002 album is revisited here as Dear Ben Pt II.)

The accompanying musical film is really something. Around 65 minutes long, it features Lopez as “Artist” and the likes of Jane Fonda, Trevor Noah, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Kim Petras as members of Artist’s “Zodiac Love Council”. Artist keeps choosing the wrong guys, and the council collectively attempts to send her in a more fulfilling direction. Artist traipses around glamorously between a blinged-up space station, her obscenely opulent mansion, her shrink’s office and various extravagant weddings, including three of her previous nuptials. It’s perhaps unsurprising that Lopez had to fund the film with USD$20million of her own dollars, or that “everyone thought [she] was crazy”.

Perhaps Lopez wanted to tantalise the screen generation with content for their eyes as well as their ears – she has 17.5 million followers on TikTok alone – or, perhaps, privately (and wisely) she wasn’t sure if the songs alone would generate enough buzz around the album. Heavy hitter producers abound, including Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Chris Isaak and Jason Derulo, but none elevate these songs from well-produced serviceable pop to the kind of indelible bangers we know Lopez is capable of (see: Waiting for Tonight, I’m Real, Get Right, the list goes on).

Midnight Trip to Vegas is a case in point. Lopez’s voice is breezier here, and there are cutesy in-jokes (I’m curious as to which Freddie Mercury number Bennifer sang along the way), but it feels like a missed opportunity to turn the mood raucous, and the song limps out before it’s made its presence felt. The production is slightly more interesting on Rebound (not about Ben, obvs), but Lopez’s kindergarten-level lyrics dilute the impact.

Not Going Anywhere is effective, sultry R&B, but it fails to truly lift off, and concludes with a vocodered Affleck whispering “I love you… I always have”, something that’s sure to delight some and elicit non-sexy groans from others.

Reportedly, in an upcoming tie-in documentary, Affleck is taken aback when Lopez shows friends his love letters (titled The Greatest Love Story Never Told; Lopez borrowed the title for the doco) that served as inspiration for the album. “If you’re making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it,” he says. Let’s hope this expensive vanity project/love story doesn’t weigh too heavily on the relationship it holds so dear.

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