Tough year for a pop princess. Can things get any lower for JLO?
An album and film based on her love story with Ben Affleck have tanked; her tour has been cancelled; her marriage may be next. What went wrong for Jennifer Lopez.
There is a book, somewhere in Los Angeles, made up of love letters and emails sent in the Noughties that have been collected and bound into a bulging file.
It was pulled together by the actor and director Ben Affleck and given to pop princess Jennifer Lopez when the two reunited two decades after their break-up - and with four marriages and five children between them. To him, the book was deeply personal, packed with intimate details of their relationship. To JLo, it was material, and she handed it to her producers, writers, directors and collaborators. The “bible”, as they called it, formed the basis of her new album (This is Me ... Now), her new “visual album” (This is Me ... Now: A Love Story), her new documentary (The Greatest Love Story Never Told) and her forthcoming tour (This is Me ... Live: The Greatest Hits).
Yet these projects, many of them funded by Lopez, 54, are bombing. The album has been the worst-performing of her career, the documentary was critically walloped and her tour is selling so slowly that dates were being cut, until Friday, when she cancelled the summer tour altogether, according to the US gig company Live Nation, “to be with her children, family and close friends”. On her website, the singer told fans: “Please know that I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t feel it was absolutely necessary.”
And as life imitates art, according to the gossip columns her two-year marriage to Affleck, 51, might now be over. It has also been reported that her planned multimillion-dollar Las Vegas residency is to be scrapped and her latest movie, Atlas, has been panned. It has been an annus horribilis.
So has Jenny from the Block hit a roadblock? “For a pop star it’s hard to sustain a career for as long as she has, and she has done that through her tenacity,” says Monica Rivera, a personal brand strategist from the same Bronx neighbourhood as Lopez. “It makes sense that the younger generation won’t resonate with her as much. That’s just what happens.”
In the late 1990s, Lopez became a dominant force in pop, decked out in her Bronx uniform of hoop earrings, cargo pants and blue-tinted diamante sunglasses, with songs such as Let’s Get Loud and Jenny from the Block.
After an enthusiastic arrival in Hollywood (Out of Sight, The Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan), she starred in the rom-com Gigli - which is where she met Affleck, the perma-pissed-off, bearded hunk with an Oscar, cigarette hanging out of mouth, black coffee in hand.
When they got together soon after, the intensity of their relationship was obvious (her dollars 2.5 million engagement ring; his appearance in her music videos), but two years later - apparently affected by the frenzied tabloid coverage of their relationship, as well as differing views about fame - they broke up and called off the wedding just days before.
When they got back together in 2021, the world, emerging from lockdowns desperate for nostalgia and starved of celebrity news, went into meltdown. “Bennifer” were the ones who got away - and then found each other again.
“In a world that doesn’t make much sense,” said Vox, the online magazine, “Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez being together does.” They were married in Las Vegas in 2022 - and again in Georgia.
It was this that inspired Lopez to create so many new projects, all of which were pretty whacko. The visual album - a “narrative-driven cinematic odyssey” - was “just bonkers”, says Alice Leppert, professor of media and communication studies at Ursinus College, Pennsylvania, and co-editor of the journal Celebrity Studies. “It seemed like it should be a joke but she appeared to be taking it seriously, so I think audiences didn’t know how to respond.”
The accompanying documentary, self-financed with dollars 20 million (no studios would touch it), was about her commitment to making art out of the relationship.
But it was also about the yin and yang of the couple: Lopez, who wants to share and strives to maintain her megawatt celebrity, and Affleck, who wants to guard himself against fame.
Lopez’s love projects, however, fell largely flat. The album sold 14,000 copies in its first week, entering the Billboard charts at a humbling No 38. The arena tour has seen a number of dates cancelled and has changed its name from This is Me ... Now to This is Me ... Live: The Greatest Hits in an attempt to lure in punters with the classics.
Not all the figures are quite so dire. Atlas, in which Lopez stars as a counterterrorism analyst fighting an artificial intelligence, is the No 1 ranking film on Netflix in the US, with 28.2 million views in its first weekend, though it has had an embarrassing critical reception. “Cheap, dark, plasticky and fake,” went one review; “Just what Jennifer Lopez needs - another flop,” said another.
After a long career in which success on screen and in song has seemed inexorable, Lopez appears to be facing a clunking new reality.
The Times