Jennifer Lopez – This is Me… Now Review

Thanks for the update there, J. Lo. Nobody likes an obvious declaration of music as a pinpoint of present experience and life – Jennifer Lopez sounds out of step with this. Obvious tones of where she is headed and what she is doing are difficult to apply any shock or suddenness to when it is in the limelight constantly and in the firing line of tabloid papers. It is not Lopez’s fault she has achieved a form of stardom usually reserved for assassinated presidents and pop culture icons of the early 2000s, she is the latter. This Is Me… Now is a neat nod to her previous record, This Is Me… Then, for those few who remember it. Her first proper record in ten years (not including the Marry Me soundtrack) is as hollow as can be expected for someone to hop on the pop R&B train.  

Missing more than a few beats across this thirteen-track experience, Lopez opens with flutes, medieval iconography and a sense of losing yourself to the flow of a beat left behind during her heyday. This is Me… Now is mired by the lack of growth – ironic given the title and how similar sounding it is to when the pop charts would bow to the might of a Lopez single. It is hard to hate though there is little to love, such is the life of a static record which sounds the same throughout. Reflective tones, simple trap beats and a consistent ode to Ben Affleck. It makes sense. You can only sing and respond to what is around you and it would appear Lopez has not left the threshold of her home since penning these tracks. Perhaps not.going.anywhere is a hint to the mundanities of housebound life.  

Most of these tracks rely on the same few beats, the twinkling sound effects heard early on in not.going.anywhere are repeated throughout and it gives a hollow feel to This Is Me… Now. More obvious references are made to the Good Will Hunting and Argo star on Dear Ben, Pt. II, though it is tricky to hear much of a change in dynamic, tone or pitch. Lopez deploys the same safe sounds across this record and it makes for a fundamentally dull listen. Everything whirrs away as it should. Dependable sound mixing and a solid voice are still the core of these tunes but present nothing out of the ordinary, either for the pop genre or for Lopez.  

It is then down to the lyrics to pick up the pieces and keep pace but it does not come good enough. There is little love to have for the day in the life form of Hearts and Flowers and the rest to follow is a meandering and almost lonely, expressionless slice of pop pointlessness. Broken Like Me is as gutless and middle-of-the-road as it gets for a pop star hoping to prove themselves as having everyday troubles. Lopez does nothing to signal her wealth or status bar frequent mentions of her relationships, but she does little to effectively apply some real-world issue or ambition. Feelings of being taken for granted or shuffled off with little attention float through This Time Around, another bash and spotlight attempt for the Affleck relationship. The real question is who cares?