Jennifer Lopez‘s This is Me… Now was born from a story made for rom-coms, perhaps one even starring Lopez herself. The pop-R&B opus is connected to its spiritual prequel, 2002’s This is Me… Then, in that it was inspired in part by her budding relationship with Ben Affleck, and this new one is inspired by… well, the same thing. Sort of.
To get in the spirit of the new album, Lopez revisited a collection of letters Affleck wrote to her when they got together. He kept them after they broke up, which must have creeped ex-wife Jennifer Garner out, but is kind of sweet in hindsight. When they rekindled their romance back in 2021, Affleck gifted her the notes.
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This passion, history, and romance informs This is Me… Now. It’s a sweet story, the tale of long lost lovers returning to each other, revealing that they never stopped thinking about each other, even as their lives evolved, changed, and were enriched. The problem, though, is that this is often the most interesting part of the album.
In pure economic terms, This is Me… Now can’t be separated from the film that accompanies it. The project was self-funded and cost $20million. In a Vanity Fair interview cover story about the project and her sizeable financial investment, Lopez said: “Everybody thought I was crazy… and by the way, I thought I was crazy.”
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Of course, a star as big as Lopez defines things in terms of legacy, not dollars and cents. She added: “Now I feel like because Ben and I have rediscovered each other — and now that we’re married — I have something to offer. This is the defining piece of work that’s going to close that chapter so I can move on to the next part of my life.”
She seems to be speaking in grand gestures about how much this project means to her, how it reflects the years of romantic wilderness her and Ben trudged through to once again find each other. But if their love is so unique, so time-tested, so true, so triumphant, why does the album often resort to formulaic sounds and lyrics?
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As with any album that involves hordes of songwriters, A&Rs and producers, there are plenty of good ideas on here. Most of them, though, sound like they could be sung by anyone. “To Be Yours” features a squeaky vocal sample and major key piano chords. DJ scratches and MIDI plug-in synth stabs take listeners all the back way to ’02, when Ben and Jenn first fell in love. It’s a clever use of sounds to signify era, and the first verse sets the scene.
“Long ago and oh, so far away, babe/ Met this superstar and then he changed my life/ Don’t you remember you told me you loved me?/ So promise me that we ain’t gonna waste more time,” she sings. It’s nice, but Lopez can’t help but fall back on hackneyed cliches. The goodwill goes away when the chorus concludes with: “It’s like Heaven times a thousand.” There have to be better ways to describe being in love — being really, really in love.
Lopez can’t stop comparing her love to the afterlife on This is Me… Now. When you begin to move past the story of reconciliation and examine the actual ideas throughout the project, the album doesn’t quite hold up. On “Mad in Love” she sings: “Not this time ’cause this is how it feels if Heaven is a place/ Came back into my life, you opened up the gates/ With you, it’s paradise and it was worth the wait.” Not only is Ben Affleck like heaven, he’s also like paradise.
For all of the time, money, and energy J.Lo and her team put into the theatrical accompaniment to This is Me… Now, it would have behooved all involved to spend a little more time on the music that the film was meant to accompany.
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Paradoxically, it’s when Lopez recalls her lowest points that she sounds her best. Over somber plucked guitar notes, she sings of their breakup on “Broken Like Me.” It’s one of the only truly powerful moments of the record, with J.Lo grappling with how destroyed the dissolution of this relationship made her. “Broken like me, tried to believe/ That I could fix you, but you’re broken like me,” she sings.
Lopez comes close to explaining how each of them worked on themselves, instead of just saying that they did on “Dear Ben, Pt. II,” which does a nice job building on the story of its predecessor from 2002. Even there, she refuses to give context outside of vague declarations of Ben’s greatness.
This is Me… Now hears Jennifer Lopez constantly tell fans how great her love life is. She rarely bothers to explain why.
RELEASE DATE: February 16, 2024
RECORD LABEL: Nuyorican/BMG
Listen to This Is Me… Now below:
