{"id":46838,"date":"2024-02-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/this-is-me-now\/"},"modified":"2024-02-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T00:00:00","slug":"this-is-me-now","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/this-is-me-now\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Me&#8230; Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer Lopez is our Elizabeth Taylor. She\u2019s the kind of Hollywood royalty that recalls celebrity of a bygone era. She\u2019s a diva meant for the monoculture. Her debut album, 1999\u2019s\u00a0<em>On the 6,\u00a0<\/em>was released when MTV was in its\u00a0<em>TRL<\/em>\u00a0moment: pop stars would descend onto the\u00a0<em>TRL<\/em>\u00a0studios in Times Square to introduce their new music and mingle with screaming teens. When Jennifer Lopez decided to expand her celebrity to music, she was a natural fit for millennium-era pop. Veteran divas Janet Jackson, Madonna, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston were plotting how to enter the 2000s, competing with singers half their age. Jennifer Lopez was a natural successor to the legendary pop singers of the \u201990s, bringing that multi-platform glamour while maintaining a fresh perspective.<\/p>\n<p>A quarter of a century later, Jennifer Lopez is a brand as much as a recording artist. It\u2019s not just music. It\u2019s movies. It\u2019s television. It\u2019s clothing. It\u2019s restaurants. It\u2019s perfume. Every project that Lopez attaches her name to is weighed down with her overwhelming fame. Her new album\u00a0<em>This Is Me\u2026Now<\/em>\u00a0is Lopez\u2019s canny way of competing with the likes of Taylor Swift and Beyonc\u00e9, two singers who have redefined the concept of the 21st-century pop diva. Like Swift and Beyonc\u00e9, Lopez has designs on proving herself not just a charismatic pop singer but an auteur, releasing a $20 million film to accompany the record.<\/p>\n<p><em>This Is Me\u2026Now<\/em>\u00a0is a sequel to Lopez\u2019s third album, 2002\u2019s\u00a0<em>This Is Me&#8230; Then<\/em>. That record was released as a public valentine to her then-partner Ben Affleck, to whom the album was dedicated. The record\u2019s lead single, \u201cJenny From The Block,\u201d was a self-referential tune built on her self-constructed legend. The album was another huge hit for the singer, selling over six million copies, spinning off a string of hit singles. The sound was a slight departure from the flashy dance-pop of her first two albums, looking to \u201970s soul-pop and sunny disco-flecked r&#038;b.<\/p>\n<p>Her new album is a return of sorts to that soulful sound. It\u2019s not a drastic departure from her usual sound, which borrows heavily from contemporary urban pop.\u00a0<em>This Is Me\u2026 Now<\/em>\u00a0comes 22 years after its predecessor, but the sound on the new album doesn\u2019t sound too different. Though Affleck and Lopez split after the first album, in the subsequent years, Affleck famously married and divorced Jennifer Garner and became something of a tabloid fixture, eventually becoming a meme-worthy figure of midlife ennui. Reunited with Lopez, Affleck has inspired yet another studio LP from the multi-hyphenated superstar.<\/p>\n<p>On the first album, Lopez guilelessly included a treacly track, \u201cDear Ben.\u201d She got shit for it, especially after their publicized bust-up. Now that they&#8217;re back together, the second album has a companion tune, \u201cDear Ben, Pt. II,\u201d a marked improvement on the original. Perhaps it\u2019s because she decided to pay tribute to her honey with a sweetly swinging number instead of a ponderous ballad. For such a calculated and deliberate performer, \u201cDear Ben, Pt. II\u201d is surprisingly vulnerable and open, its lyrics hopeful and lovey-dovey, as she trills, \u201cAnd when I think you let me down\/You lift my hopes\/And if I try to pull away\/You pull me close\/And you remind me why you are the man I chose.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Affleck inspired the opening tune, the title track, which tells their off-and-on love story. She passionately coos, \u201cGrowin\u2019 pains, broke some chains in every chapter\/Now we know what it takes for our ever after\/Took some lefts, now we\u2019re right, here we are.\u201d It\u2019s a spirited performance and a charming tune that introduces an introspective Lopez who\u2019s only too happy to share her travails with her audiences.<\/p>\n<p>But this is Jennifer Lopez\u2019s album, so we also have the funky, feisty dance tune. The first single, \u201cCan\u2019t Get Enough,\u201d is a grinding, groovy number that recalls the singer\u2019s best hits. It\u2019s the kind of exciting number that made Jennifer Lopez such a reliable hitmaker in the 2000s. The album\u2019s other single, \u201cRebound,\u201d is a moody, pensive song with classic noughties skittery beats and clipped vocals. These were wise choices for singles because they\u2019re definite highlights.<\/p>\n<p>The other high spot, surprisingly is \u201cMidnight Trip to Vegas.\u201d Despite its silly title, it works remarkably well. Expertly employing a sample of Chris Isaak\u2019s \u201cWicked Game,\u201d the song is a successful story-song in which Lopez imagines escaping the circus of an oversized wedding for a simple elopement in Las Vegas. It\u2019s an understated, sweet, yet humorous song that uses Lopez\u2019s sweetly melodic voice. The lyrics, with their harried descriptions of \u201cOrchid arrangements, dresses and pastries\u2026families and agents, room reservations\u2026paps helicopters, event of the ages\u201d sound like the plot devices of one of her romantic comedies. (Weddings feature greatly in Jennifer Lopez\u2019s cinematic oeuvre.)<\/p>\n<p>The last studio LP from Lopez was 2014\u2019s\u00a0<em>AKA\u00a0<\/em>(though it wasn\u2019t like Lopez was silent: she released the soundtrack to her rom-com\u00a0<em>Marry Me<\/em>\u00a0last year). A decade is a long time to return with a proper studio release, and this feels as if Lopez is releasing a definitive album. She has suggested that this may be her last album. If that\u2019s true, she would be ending her recording career on a qualified high. Though\u00a0<em>This Is Me\u2026Now<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t hit the highs of Taylor Swift\u2019s\u00a0<em>Midnights<\/em>\u00a0or Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s\u00a0<em>Renaissance<\/em>, it\u2019s a cohesive, consistent work that celebrates a refreshing sunniness. If anything,\u00a0<em>This Is Me\u2026Now<\/em>\u00a0celebrates the happiness of finding love. This may not be Lopez\u2019s magnum opus, but it\u2019s still endearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":34966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7602],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-46838","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jennifer-lopez","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46838"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}