music review
This is me…now
ICYMI: Jennifer Lopez is like crazy in love.
Even 20 years after their first get-together, her appeal to Ben Affleck has been proven time and time again by her multiple hyphenations.
So do we really need a dozen baker songs about Bennifer 2.0?
Apparently, J.Lo thinks so with her first album in 10 years, This Is Me…Now (go out on friday) is entirely about their rekindling, from finding their way back to each other in 2021 to eloping in Las Vegas the following year.
“Now” is a follow-up to “This Is Meâ€ã Then,” which Lopez released in 2002 at the height of the media frenzy surrounding Bennifer 1.0, but it’s the same hook-filled album that provided “Jenny From the.” It pales in comparison. Block,” “I’m Glad,” “All I Have,” and many other classics.
Honestly, it’s about as watery as the iced coffee Affleck buys at Dunkin’ every morning.
While pop greats like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga reinvent themselves with each new era of music, Lopez is stuck in her glory days, stuck with the uninspiring sounds and stories of a quarter-century ago. are recycled.
From the jump, the 54-year-old singer reminded us that she “went a little bit to the left” on the album’s title song before landing in Affleck’s arms.
“Please accept me for who I am/And I accept you for who I am,” she growls. “And we’ll build this life together/I found a shooting star.”
On the feel-good single “Can’t Get Enough,” Lopez reiterates that she “still loves” Affleck, 51, and on the hip-hop-leaning “This Time Around,” she vows to “break” nothing. He tells his haters that he can’t do it. A power couple who has “started over”.
“We plan on doing this for the rest of our lives,” she says of the latter.
At times, the Grammy nominee appears to be competing as one woman to surpass herself lyrically. (she did it Release “Loot” in the end. )
In the nostalgic 2000s song “Not Going Anywhere,” she raps about her and the Oscar winner’s first love gone awry, singing, “St was rocky like the Harlem Shake.”
And on the melodic “Greatest Love Story Never Told,” she moans about the dirty things she does with her husband. “I miss your body / Climbing on top of me / Sliding inside me / The way you ride me / Our bodies align.” Wow.
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However, there is beauty in the madness.
The slow-burning “Broken Like Me” is J. Lo at her rawest. The pain in her voice is evident as she reflects on how, before she reunited with Affleck, she picked up the pieces of her broken marriage to Marc Anthony.
“Two babies in the house/Mama had to be strong,” she sings about Anthony’s now 15-year-old twins, Max and Emme. “In the fight for love / In the fight for myself”
But once Bennifer’s love story comes full circle, Lopez becomes a reborn woman.
The penultimate “Midnight Trip to Vegas” shows how the stress of wedding planning (“We’re drowning in orchid arrangements, dresses and pastries”) turns the “Gigli” co-stars into It records how he “did something crazy” and rushed out into the world. Little White Wedding Her Chapel, famous for saying “I dos”.
I wish Lopez had been so spontaneous about stepping out of his comfort zone.
