Music review
This Is Me…Now
ICYMI: Jennifer Lopez is madly in love.
The multihyphenate has proven time and time again that she is still hot for Ben Affleck two decades after their first go-around.
So do we really need a baker’s dozen of songs about Bennifer 2.0?
Well, apparently J.Lo thinks so, as her first album in a decade, “This Is Me…Now” (out Friday), is entirely about their rekindled relationship, from finding their way back to each other in 2021 to eloping in Las Vegas the following year.
“Now” is the sequel to “This Is Me…Then,” which Lopez released in 2002 at the height of the media circus surrounding Bennifer 1.0, but it pales in comparison to the hook-laden album that gave us “Jenny From the Block,” “I’m Glad,” “All I Have” and so many other classics.
To put it bluntly, it’s as watery as the iced coffee Affleck picks up from Dunkin’ every morning.
While pop powerhouses like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga reinvent themselves with each era of new music, Lopez is bogged down in her glory days, recycling uninspired sounds and stories from a quarter-century ago.
From the jump, the singer, 54, reminds us on the album’s title track that she “took some lefts” before landing right back in Affleck’s arms.
“Take me as I am / And I’ll take you as you are,” she warbles. “And we’ll build this life together / I found my shooting star.”
Lopez stresses yet again on the feel-good single “Can’t Get Enough” that she’s “still in love” with Affleck, 51, and tells haters on the hip-hop-leaning “This Time Around” that nothing can “break” the power couple now that they got “a do-over.”
“We gon’ do this s–t for the rest of our lives,” she intones on the latter.
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