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 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.
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?”
“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.”
