On âThis Is Me….Now,â Jennifer Lopez’s first solo album in a decade, the singer takes back her rightful place on the throne of pop music.
In 2002, Jennifer Lopez dropped âThis Is Me⦠Then,” her third studio album that married her glossy-eyed romanticism with R&B-pop rhythms. She also announced an engagement to the actor Ben Affleck, who she met while filming the movie âGigliâ in 2001. The pair broke up a few years later.
Fast forward 20 years and âBennifer” â as they were dubbed by the ’00s press â has returned, and so has her sublime pop. In 2022, they married, and now in 2024, the âThis Is Meâ series continues â articulating nostalgia and a loving feeling she knows best. It is the soundtrack to a new J.Lo Renaissance â one where she got her happy ending and has made the art to let listeners into her dreamy love story.
The opening track, âThis Is Me⦠Now,â is quintessential J.Lo, with romantic instrumentation of flutes and harps. âHad a lot to learn, had a lot to grow, had to find my way,â sings Lopez on a track reminiscent of a track that might’ve been on her 2002 R&B dance-pop album â with a new, refined wisdom.
It proceeds âTo Be Yours,â an energetic love song â sentimental but never saccharine â perfect for a serenade or the dance floor atop hip-hop beats.
The album releases Friday, the same day as a film by the same name: âThis Is Me… Now: A Love Story.”
âCan’t Get Enough,â an early single that doubled as a tease for the movie, was released with a music video that depicts the singer getting married several times, as she has in real life. In that way, the visual communicates that she’s ready to open the door to her life and show it all â the good and the ugly â all the while sweetly singing âI’m still in love with you, boy,â a gender-flipped take on Alton Ellis’ 1967 reggae classic âIâm Still in Love with You,â which her song samples.
As for that relationship transparency: âDear Ben pt. IIâ is a sequel to the slow-burn âDear Benâ from the 2002 album. The second installment is a more dynamic take on the same relationship. âWhen I think youâll let me down, you lift my hopes,â she sings about finding love with Affleck again, two decades later.
At the end of the album is the R&B anthem âGreatest Love Story Never Toldâ â a bow on the album’s full package â Lopez’s breathy vocals sway above an acoustic guitar, piano and strings. âItâs destiny how we found each other twice in one lifetime,â she sings both for her audience and for her husband.
âThis Is Me… Nowâ is for the Jennifer Lopez loyalists who patiently awaited her return, Bennifer fans, and those who believe in true love â no matter what shape it takes, or how long.