Jennifer Lopez is sharing brand-new details about why she decided to release her first album in nearly a decade.
Earlier this month, the musician sat down for an interview with Apple Music 1 to discuss This Is Me…Now, which will honor the 20th anniversary of This Is Me…Then. J.Lo admitted that the 2002 record was heavily influenced by her now-husband, Ben Affleck, so it seemed fitting to release a follow-up that tells their story.
“That album, This Is Me…Then, really captured a time where I fell in love with the love of my life. And I just, it’s all right there on the record,” she said. “Every single song we wrote, me writing ‘Dear Ben,’ it was such a special moment in time to have captured.”
If you recall, Affleck proposed to J.Lo in 2002, but they broke up two years later. (They didn’t rekindle their relationship until 2021.) Since This Is Me…Then was written about their romance, Lopez revealed that she couldn’t perform those songs after the breakup.
“I wouldn’t even perform these records. It was so painful after we broke up,” she explained. “Once we called off that wedding 20 years ago, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life, and I honestly felt like I was going to die.”
J.Lo continued, “I didn’t make music in that way that I did in 2002 until now. It set me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn’t get it right. But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending. It has the most, would never happen in Hollywood ending.”
Our playlist is waiting for This Is Me…Now.
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