Having Jennifer Lopez in our humdrum world for almost three decades is something not many stars can boast of. But our level of interest in her is closely associated with our interest in so many other JLo elements — the return of Bennifer or her relationship with actor Ben Affleck, her screen presence and, of course, her music. Her latest album, This Is Me… Now, celebrates every aspect of her life.
The sequel to Lopez’s third studio album, This Is Me... Then (2002), is a tear-duct cleanser, more so when you consider the latest effort in conjunction with This Is Me... Now: A Love Story, a romantic drama musical film based on the album.
Integral to the film are the love letters Affleck had written when Bennifer was evolving in 2002. “I told Ben, I saved all these letters that I had and he was like ‘no you didn’t’. And I said ‘yeah, I did’. Then for that Christmas he wound up putting them all in a book for us. And went back and found tonnes of stuff, and e-mails we wrote to each other back then and then all the emails from when we reconnected and he put them all in this book. And I brought that into the studio the first day and I said, you know 20 years ago I wrote This is Me... Then and captured a moment in time and I would like to write This is Me... Now and capture this moment in time, and here’s a book called The Greatest Love Story Never Told that was gifted to me by my husband. This is the inspiration for me and I would like to capture this moment in time and let people know I’ve been on this journey, and if you’ve ever wondered like me, does true love exist, does anything last forever. I want them to know that that’s real and it does exist. It doesn’t always have to be a straight road, it’s not always pretty, but it is real,” Lopez told Ebro Darden on Apple Music 1. In fact, if you are a subscriber of Apple Music, you will be hearing a lot more about what the 54-year-old has to say.
She has been through a lot
Lopez made her entry in the 1990s, breaking into TV on the sketch-comedy series In Living Colour, working under the show’s choreographer and director, Rosie Perez. She was quickly noticed and film opportunities came her way, first in supporting roles in Money Train and Out of Sight. But it was 1997 that became a crowning year for her as she took on the title role in the 1997 biopic of the Tejano music singer Selena, earning Lopez her first Golden Globe nomination. To top this, her debut single If You Had My Love (1999) arrived and delivered fireworks on the charts, setting a mid-tempo formula that still works.
She always sings of love and it always works. On her latest album, she sings “With you it’s paradise/ And it was worth the wait” in Mad In Love while we hear “What about a midnight trip to Vegas/ Just me and you, baby” in Midnight Trip to Vegas, offering specifics of her and Affleck’s “simple” nuptials.
“This is Me... Now is the grown adult woman who’s been through a lot and who understands that I can’t idealise and make life perfect. All I can do is embrace all of the beauty of the scars that I picked up along the way, and how they made me who I am today and how kind of awesome that person is,” she told Apple Music 1.
You must be wondering how much of Affleck is on the album and the film. He is everywhere. “I have hope that things will always be great. Even when they’re hard. That is a part of me. And I think when this happened in my life there’s a surreal magical plot twist in my life. And I got a second chance at this love, it made me want to share that. It made me want to share that hope and as an artiste you want to share the things you know. I love my music and I love to make movies and do all the things you see in the project but I also see life that way. I want to make life beautiful for myself and for my kids and my husband. And for everybody. In my own little way,” said the Jenny from the Block singer as she joined Ebro.
‘There are no rules now’
The album, the film and a making-of documentary (The Greatest Love Story Never Told is coming on February 27) reportedly cost $20m, if Variety is correct. But looking at the film, it’s easy to believe the number. The film is a series of dramatic scenes and musical numbers that celebrate love and what Lopez believes in. At times it’s allegorical, but there are enough hearts and tear ducts to be taken care of. The somewhat biographical musical mishmash is held together by dream sequences, therapy sessions and a well-meaning ‘Zodiacal Council’, comprising Jane Fonda, Keke Palmer, Post Malone and Neil deGrasse Tyson, among others. Ben Affleck plays Rex Stone, a cable news anchorman, who likes to ask a simple question: Where’s the love?
“There are no rules now. And I think it’s this generation because it’s a tech generation so there are all these possibilities to do all kinds of different things and you have to be open to things changing. They’ve changed since we first started, and it’s like, are you gonna get stuck in how things used to be or are you going to evolve with it? I mean, because of that I’m able to make a musical original, we don’t have a name for, this is a new thing, right? I couldn’t do that years ago because the movie would’ve had to have been two hours or I would’ve had to be on MTV or it had to do this or… it’s not that anymore…. I think it’s very exciting. It’s an exciting time like the Wild West… you know what I mean? You find your way, you put down your flag and this is mine,” Lopez told Apple Music 1.
Ultimately, it’s about her second chance at love with Affleck. This is what she wants to share with fans. The superstar couple, whose on-and-off relationship picked up plenty of media attention since the early 2000s, married in Las Vegas in 2022. The two had become engaged in the early 2000s and in 2003, they postponed their wedding, ultimately breaking off their engagement months later.
“I’m just glad that even after all the ups and downs and the journey… because life is not a fairy tale… that’s what you kind of learn. And that’s what This is Me... Now is about. This Is Me…Then is a fairy tale,” she said.
What next for Lopez? The stage where she thrives. “People are always like, ‘Oh, you like acting, you like doing movies, you like doing... what’s your favourite thing?’ Honestly, my favourite thing is live performances. Being live on stage. I feel there’s such an exchange. First, I love people. I love looking into their faces and really looking at their eyes and seeing what they’re trying to say. They’re laughing and they’re screaming, and they’re crying, and they’re jumping up and down, and they’re dancing, or they’re just really still and listening. Whatever it is, there’s such a relationship there.”