By many measures, Jennifer Lopez should be in a great place in the first half of of 2024.
After all, the 54-year-old singer/actor/dancer/influencer/entrepreneur isn’t just one of the most famous women in the world, she’s back together with the love of her life, Ben Affleck, rekindling her romance with the actor in 2021 after they dramatically called off their engagement 20 years earlier.
But, career-wise, 2024 has proven to be a challenge for Lopez. In the past few weeks alone, she has faced such headlines as “Why does everyone suddenly hate Jennifer Lopez?” And, on “The Town” podcast this week, entertainment industry experts Matthew Belloni and Lucas Shaw both agreed that she was one of the “losers” so far of the year.
The reason for the “loser” designation? People are not rushing to buy Lopez’s first album in 10 years, “This Is Me … Now” or to buy seats for her North American concert tour this summer, they said.
TOPSHOT – US actress/singer Jennifer Lopez and US actor Ben Affleck arrive for the premiere of “The Mother” at the Westwood Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles, California, on May 10, 2023. (Photo by Michael Tran / AFP) (Photo by MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty Images)
The album peaked at No. 38 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in February, then disappeared, Forbes reported. Meanwhile, Lopez may have 253 million followers on Instagram, but Belloni, Shaw and others say that doesn’t translate into people clamoring to scoop up tickets to her tour. The tour launches June 26 in Orlando, Florida, and Lopez performs at Chase Center in San Francisco on July 16.
But so far, the concert is facing “weak” ticket sales, which forced Lopez to cancel seven dates last week and to rebrand the tour to apparently broaden its scope, changing it from “This Is Me… Now” to “This Is Me… Live | The Greatest Hits,” Variety reported.
“This is super embarrassing,” Belloni, Puck’s co-founder and The Hollywood Reporter’s former editor, said on “The Town.” Belloni talked about the big “roll-out” Lopez had undertaken to get the public excited about the album and the tour. In addition to a social media blitz, she also released two films, with Lopez sharing that she self-financed her three-part media extravaganza — the album and two movies — for $20 million.
The first film, “This is Me … Now: A Love Story,” is a romantic musical tour of her album. The second has the rather self-important title, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” and is a behind-the-scenes documentary about the creation of the album, with a focus on Lopez and Affleck finding their way back to each other. Lopez is depicted as getting “candid” about her personal growth, her struggle to find a suitable romantic partner and her much publicized habit of cycling through relationships, engagements and marriages. At one point, she acknwoledges that people are probably wondering, “What is this girl’s (expletive) problem?”
But even with Lopez’s big media roll-out, interest in her album and concert are definitely nowhere near Taylor Swift levels, even if some critics would say that Lopez has those expectations. Unfortunately, after rebranding her tour to make it appear to be more of a “greatest hits” event, “it’s still not selling,” Belloni said.
“I asked a big music industry person, like, what the hell is going on with J-Lo,” Belloni continued. “The response was she way overshot. Great person, great work ethic, nice team but they over-reached.”
It’s also debatable whether she has any hit songs, Belloni said, adding, “She was never as big as she was in her own mind. This is a sad situation.”
Shaw, who covers entertainment business news for Bloomberg News, asked, “When is the last time J-Lo had a song that anyone cared about. From a music perspective, I feel like she peaked 20 years.” He compared her to an artist like Shakira, who consistently puts out new music. He said that the public is less interested in Lopez as a musical artist and more interested in her “as a persona.”
On that note, Shaw and Belloni both observed that Lopez is back in demand for her acting, saying that her 2023 Netflix action thriller, “The Mother,” was a hit for the streaming service.
Jennifer Lopez (with Lucy Paez, background) in “The Mother.” (Eric Milner/Netflix/TNS)
Her new documentary, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” also has generated buzz because of its focus on her relationship with Affleck, who has become her fourth husband. Since they married in 2022, Lopez and Affleck have been proved to be surprisingly engaging creative collaborators, including on his popular Dunkin’ Donuts commercials. The couple also have put themselves out to the world as exemplars for mid-life romance and for a celebrity brand of blended-family parenting.
Affleck, moreover, also appears in “The Greatest Love Story Never Told.” He’s seen supporting Lopez on the set and giving her constructive feedback as they sit side by side on the sofa with their laptops. The famously guarded Affleck explains how loving the very public Lopez means that he’s had to adjust his views on sharing aspects of their private life.
The film has garnered plenty of positive reviews but it also have given more ammunition to Lopez’s detractors, prompting Los Angeles Times writer Alex Zaragoza to ask in an essay, “Why does everyone suddenly hate Jennifer Lopez?”
TikTokers came down especially hard on a moment in the film when Lopez is seen in her home gym after a work-out, letting out her hair and shaking it out with her hands, Zaragoza reported.
“I like taking my hair out like this,” Lopez said a 13-second clip from the film that went viral. “It reminds me like, when I was 16 in The Bronx running up and down the block. Crazy little girl who used to be (expletive) wild. No limits, all dreams and (expletive…”
To TikTok users, the moment was seen as a failed attempt by the megastar to prove her humility and force a connection to her roots as a regular “Jenny From the Block” from the Bronx, Zaragoza said
“I understand that you’re trying to milk this whole ‘I’m humble, I’m from the hood,’” one TikTok user said in commenting on the clip. “This story doesn’t really work for you anymore… This whole story of her trying to seem relatable and more, you know, ‘normal,’ it’s not really gonna work for you. Just stop.”
Zaragoza wrote that authenticity and personal narrative have long been a part “of the fame machine,” and performing authenticity “is a razors-edge walk for anyone in the spotlight.” The writer noted that audiences will turn on a celebrity as soon as they become “too annoying, too present, too cute, to anything, particularly if you’re a woman.”