Given the success rate of most marriages, especially ones made and marketed in Hollywood, it’s a testament to Jennifer Lopez’s unyielding faith in love that she recorded an entire concept album, This Is Me…Now, revolving around her rekindled romance with husband Ben Affleck. “When I was a girl they’d ask me what I’d be/A woman in love is what I grew up wantin’ to be,” she admits, feminism be damned, on the opening track.
Throughout her ninth studio album, Lopez repeatedly refers to the “destiny” and “fate” of her relationship with Affleck without so much as a hint of irony or skepticism. “We get to have a do-over, forever,” she confidently declares on “This Time Around.” Maybe she’s just always been playing the long game. After all, the whole conceit behind “Dear Ben,” a track from her 2002 album This Is Me…Then, aged terribly—until it didn’t.
To imbue that previous album with a timeless R&B quality, Lopez sought out veteran knob-twirler Bruce Swedien, who engineered and mixed classics like Michael Jackson’s Thriller. This Is Me…Now attempts to replicate that sound—and “Mad In Love” and “Not. Going. Anywhere.” both come close—but most of the album falls short of that lofty bar.
“Dear Ben Pt. II” is emblematic of the similarities and differences between Then and Now. Lopez’s collaborators on the 2002 song maximized her modest vocal abilities by pairing her voice with a simple yet insinuating melody and an understated arrangement. The sequel, though relatively low-key, features cringy verses (“Sitting here alone looking at my ring ring/Feeling overwhelmed, it makes me wanna sing sing”) and a hook that pushes Lopez’s voice beyond its limits.
Like Then, though, Now is one of Lopez’s most sonically consistent efforts. Tracks like “Hummingbird” and lead single “Can’t Get Enough” successfully capture the throwback sound of early-aughts R&B. And with the exception of Affleck, who contributes some unsettlingly pitched-down backing vocals on “Rebound,” this is Lopez’s first album since 2001’s J. Lo not to feature any rappers—though she does competently spit some verses of her own on “This Is Me…Now,” “This Time Around,” and “Not. Going. Anywhere.”
This Is Me…Now is also Lopez’s most personal album in years—maybe ever. “Broken Like Me,” a Spanish guitar-inflected ballad, finds her taking a defiant inventory of her romantic history, which also happens to be the thrust of the album’s accompanying musical film. “I watched my mother miss out on her life/All of those could-have-beens became her sacrifice,” Lopez sings on the title track. Whether or not the self-proclaimed hopeless romantic views choosing love over all else as a cautionary tale, her durable lack of cynicism is, if nothing else, admirable.
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The whole album is an ode to her (now) husband Ben Affleck, a narcissist. She clearly is a broken victim of his 20+ years narcissistic abuse and with this album she’s tryin’ to prove that ‘this time around’ he will stay, he will change and they will stay together until death does them apart. The music is underwhelming, the lyrics are perfect for a psychiatrist to analyze what a narcissistic abuse victim feels after +20 years of abuse. I feel sorry for her but I hope that one day she’ll wake up and see that she can’t change him.