How Jennifer Lopez has fallen from grace due to 'bonkers' documentary, lack of tour sales and album debuting at 38 in the Billboard Top 200

PUBLISHEDSun Apr 21 2024 14:43 GMT

UPDATEDMon Apr 22 2024 11:13 GMT

She has been dubbed the 'Queen of Dance' and is considered one of the most influential Latin entertainer of all time with six albums going Platinum.

But Jennifer Lopez's carer seemed to have plateaued of late.

He recent tour, her first in five years, has been met with low ticket sales, while her new album is lacking her typical fanfare, debuting at number 38 on the Billboard 200.

This is a far cry from her early noughties peak, when the singer sold more than 80 million records and had global headline tours.

Even four years ago, the star was applauded for one of the greatest Superbowl halftime shows in history, where she performed a medley of her greatest hits with Shakira as millions of people watched around the world.

So, where exactly did Jenny from the Block go wrong?

Weeks after Jennifer Lopez suddenly cancelled several dates from her tour for seemingly no reason, it seems the entire tour itself is being rebranded.

The couple's love story started in 2002 (pictured) when they dated while filming the movie Jersey Girl. They became engaged the following year but broke up in 2004

There certainly isn't a lack of advertising. The mother-of-two's campaign for her latest album, This is Me... Now, is self-financed - at a striking cost of $20million.

The album, which is heavily-inspired by her rekindled romance with husband Ben Affleck, has been accompanied by a a visual film, This is Me Now... A Love Story (dubbed 'bonkers' and a 'over-the-top delight for fans' by critics).

An Amazon Prime documentary titled The Greatest Love Story Never Told, about her romance with the Batman star, also accompanied the release. The moniker is an interesting choice, given the couple called off their first wedding due to 'excessive media attention'.

But why would this mean fans are turning on the once beloved star?

Her appearance in the documentary, has seen her dubbed 'out of touch' and 'delusional' by some fans. In one - widely reshared - moment J Lo plays with her hair in the mirror while reminiscing about her upbringing in the Bronx, a famously working-class neighbourhood of New York.

'I like taking my hair out like this,' she says.

The 54-year-old singer announced the tour in February - her first nationwide tour in five years - to support her new album This Is Me... Now

Now it's been revealed that the tour will be re-titled from This Is Me... Now: The Tour to This Is Me... Live, focusing more on her greatest hits, via Variety

'It reminds me, like, when I was 16 in the Bronx, running up and down the block. Crazy little girl who used to f***ing be wild and no limits, all dreams.'

The clip gained backlash on TikTok, with one user - who goes by Angela and claims to have gone to the same school as the hitmaker - saying she was 'lying to look more human'.

'We both attended an all-girls high school in an Irish and Italian neighbourhood, so you weren't "running up and down the block",' she said.

Critics too have met the documentary - and album - with a lukewarm response.

'For all her promises to show us the real her, it's a struggle to see it in the slick and sexy production,' The Independent said. The Guardian added it 'offers very little outside of simply soundtracking a cosy night in chez Bennifer' adding it was 'hopelessly middle of the road'.

So, why have the tides turned? Mostly, the star isn't keeping up with the times according to one brand expert.

'The backlash against J Lo has for sure been bubbling for a while.

'In the last decade, despite her love life being well broadcasted, there was still an air of mystery around her, as a mega superstar, ' Emily M Austen, who runs the PR agency EMERGE told Femail.

Jennifer Lopez emotionally recalled breaking off her marriage to Ben Affleck in 2004 when they first dated

The singer, 54, opened up about her relationship with her husband Ben, 51, in her new documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told

'The control of what was fed out to fans via social media and press coverage meant it was much easier to control her image.

'The first big moment for the backlash came as the Superbowl documentary, Halftime, aired in 2022.

'Her behaviour seemed uncompromising and whingy, having to share a stage with Shakira.

'Her grievance about it wasn't expressed eloquently and made her seem unlikable.

'In the shadow of beloved and long suffering Jennifer Garner, [Ben Affleck's ex-wife] much of the imagery we have seen from J Lo has been mundane - car rides with Ben, curb side arguments, fast food takeaways.

'Often looking miserable. This has shattered the fourth wall, one which we'd all bought into. We didn't want her to be a normal person.

Critics have blasted Jennifer Lopez's new film This In Me... Now: A Love Story as a 'self-financed and resolutely, painfully autobiographical' vanity project

Jennifer Lopez once revealed how Sean 'Diddy' Combs (pictured together in 2000) was the first man to cheat on her during their 'tumultuous' relationship from 1999 until 2001

The rebrand is expected to draw in fans from her previous work, which may lure in listeners who didn't connect with This Is Me... Now

'The big challenge with a star like J Lo is staying power. As her fans have grown older with her, she's not done a good enough job of engaging with new fans and bringing them on the journey with her.

J Lo's tour rebrand would 'get everyone talking about it'

Brand expert Hayley Knight added: 'There is one main reason why Jennifer Lopez has rebranded her tour, and that’s to get people talking about it.

'Sales are low, and there hasn’t been a great deal of engagement or buzz around it, so rebranding it has gotten everyone talking about it again.

However, rebranding it to the new name of ‘This is Me - Live, the Greatest Hits’, has the potential to bring the same issues. Firstly, it diminishes the confidence she has in her same titled new album, and focuses on her hits. Secondly, unlike the likes of Taylor Swift, Madonna, Britney Spears and Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez doesn’t have a devoted fan base. She has more casual fans of her music, who may or may not choose to go and see her live, or listen to her new album, so there really isn’t a buzz about it. Also, it isn’t a world tour - just North America, and this can be incredibly detrimental on ticket sales when the fan base isn’t necessarily large. For example, she’s isolating her Spanish and Latin American fans.

Jennifer also doesn’t really sit in the generation of ‘stans’ (devoted fans), and appeals more to the older generation, who aren’t consuming content on social media (TikTok), so her marketing channels are limited - and outdated. And her Amazon Prime film series, seemed to be more of a vanity project, than for her fans - unlike Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour documentary and Beyonce’s Renaissance movie. And over the past few years, her focus has shifted to movies, which she is becoming more known for with the newer generations.

Overall, her focus needs to remain on the music and appealing to a new, more engaged audience. She has been criticised for being out of touch, and it has long since been known that she is a diva, and this doesn’t go down well with audiences nowadays. People are looking for strong role models, and who are relatable, and she doesn’t come across as this. And there are actually videos on TikTok of women speaking how unrelatable she is. I think, rather than continue using her ‘Jenny from the Block’ persona, which comes across as outdated and ill-advised, she needs to be more honest with her audiences, and show them the real her, and her real life. Artists who have devoted fan bases do this very well, whether they share their life through the music, or directly with their audience.

The rebrand to boost ticket sales and appeal won’t work unless she has a strong marketing strategy, which focuses on reaching out to, and engages with existing fans, as well focus on new platforms and targeting new audiences.

'She's also not moved her origin story on at all. Much of the backlash on TikTok particularly has been as a consequence of her new documentary, billed as a self indulgent, out of touch memoir.

'The footage has provided easily cut up clips of J Lo saying delusional things, including her memories of the Bronx, some 40 years ago.

'Her $60 million mansion as people convinced she's not really connected to "running around the streets".'

'As with any launch, product market fit is important. Fundamentally, this was a documentary no one needed or wanted.

'It's like an elaborate LA version of a therapist telling you to go and journal - except this homework was a $20 million self funded timeline of her love life.

Last month, Jennifer suddenly cancelled several dates from her tour for seemingly no reason, now it seems the entire tour itself is being rebranded.

The 54-year-old singer announced the This is Me... Now tour in February - her first US tour in five years - to support her new album This Is Me... Now.

Now it's been revealed that the tour will be re-titled from This Is Me... Now: The Tour to This Is Me... Live, focusing more on her greatest hits.

Sources previously told Billboard that, 'the dates were scotched due to routing issues but that new shows have been added and will be announced soon.'

The rebrand is expected to draw in fans from her previous work, which may lure in listeners who didn't connect with This Is Me... Now.

Live Nation, the company that is producing the tour, did not respond to requests for comment about the rebranding.

However, the rebranding might not work, according to Emily, who believes J Lo's lack of authenticity could be part of the reason she is struggling to connect with fans.

'J Lo has made millions from music and film, amongst other huge brand deals and opportunities,' she explained.

'Her fans would rather hear about those pursuits, than a never ending musical about her love life. The chat about her wanting an Oscar nomination for Hustlers undermined her work by suggesting she wasn't tethered to reality.

'Promoting an alcohol brand when she says she doesn't drink and is married to a recovering alcoholic didn't help.

'The documentary screams "out of touch" and I think the reason for poor ticket sales is likely because fans a) don't know what they are going to get from her and b) have reservations about whether she is truly connected to what they want to see.

'Social media is an easy tool to ridicule.

'Cutting content up, using the Duet feature and watching people reacting to her commentary has only perpetuated this further. J Lo needs to reconnect with her community, listen to what they want, and focus in on giving them that.' The documentary also looks at her twenty-year journey to 'self-love'.

Jennifer and Ben were famously engaged in the early 2000s before breaking up, only to reunite - and later marry - in July 2022.

Their initial two-year romance was highly publicised and the intense scrutiny on their relationship was difficult for the couple to handle.

The movie and album dropped on February 16, while the documentary will be released on February 27

Jennifer said: 'Ben and I broke up three days before our wedding and we crumbled under the pressure. You think you're doing ok so you shrug it off.

The On The Floor hitmaker also got candid about the pain she felt when the relationship came to an end.

She said: 'I had a broken heart once I lost the love of my life, my best friend, and I couldn't talk for so many years and that was the hardest part.

'I used to think it was everyone else who was broken, now I think it was just me.'

The couple's love story started in 2002 when they dated while filming the movie Jersey Girl.

They became engaged the following year but broke up in 2004.

While navigating their reconciliation, two decades following their first engagement, the two-time Oscar winner Ben admitted he had zero interest in becoming a fixture on his wife's social media accounts.

'Getting back together, I said, 'Listen, one of the things I don't want is a relationship on social media,' the actor recalled.

'Then I sort of realised it's not a fair thing to ask. It's sort of like, you're gonna marry a boat captain and you go, "Well, I don't like the water."'

He continued: 'We're just two people with different kinds of approaches trying to learn to compromise.'

Ultimately, Jennifer respected his wishes, and has only posted a small handful of snaps featuring him, including a raunchy shirtless photo last Father's Day and a sweet video of them singing Sam Cooke's (What A) Wonderful World in the car on his birthday.

She shared that 'we both have PTSD' from their initial dating experience, but explained that in their present life as a married couple they're 'older' and 'wiser' (pictured in 2003)

This Is Me... Now - What do the critics say?

The Standard

Rating:

'Before diving into the pulsing metal heart of J-Lo’s new fantastically-styled love story This Is Me… Now I should probably issue a quick disclaimer: even though this is among the most unhinged pieces of film imaginable, I completely understand what on earth possessed her to make it.

'To be honest, if I happened to have a spare $20 million kicking about, the temptation to make an incredibly extra, metaphor-riddled quasi-musical about my trials and tribulations of the heart would be irresistible.

'The problem is that it wouldn’t be a very sensible way to spend it. While proper, full-blown heartbreak hurts in a way that makes you feel like you are officially the only living person in history to ever feel this rotten - ever! - most of us have been there, done that, and got the ill-advised break-up haircut to show for it.'

The Guardian

Rating:

'This Is Me … Now: A Love Story is a lot of things. It’s part visual album, part “warts-and-all” autobiography, part animated Puerto Rican myth, part sci-fi epic, part celebrity satire and part self-help exercise. It’s inarguably too many parts to make something that feels whole, a chaotic and rushed journey through the mind of a megastar who prefers to keep her real self in the shade.

'It’s not really much of anything in the end, and feels most like a stitched together collection of pre-filmed awards show bits, working best as yet more proof of Lopez’s considerable screen magnetism.

'She’s a joy to watch, a pro at elevating something that should be beneath her, even when it has come from her own hand. If this is Lopez as she is now, willing to take a certain kind of risk, then let’s hope she’s willing to take more.'

Empire

Rating:

'It is a pretty audacious hour-and-a-bit. Much of the film will have you scratching your head in bafflement.

'Self-financed and resolutely, painfully autobiographical, This Is Me... Now: A Love Story has been accused of being a vanity project for Lopez — an accusation which feels meaningless.

'Of course it is! You would hardly catch her doing some sort of humility project. This is a garish, frequently insane, diamond-encrusted fantasy trip into the mind of a superstar, and we should be grateful to have even limited access.'

The Telegraph

Rating:

'Jennifer Lopez is reported to have spent $20 million (approximately £16 million) of her own money on this extended concept video for her album of the same name. It shows for two reasons.

'First, the viewer is dazzled by the kind of high gloss that only large amounts of cash can buy, presumably with the intention of blinding them to the project’s lack of purpose or depth.

'Second, if someone else were to hand J-Lo $20 million to make a film, in which she portrays herself as a Disney princess type looking for love in all the wrong places, they would surely say: spend it wisely. What’s most exciting about it, is that behind the lunacy, so much of it works.'

The Independent

Rating:

'The plot feels truly chaotic, blending (deep breath here, please) mythology, astrology, autobiography, confessional, modern romantic comedy and Old Hollywood glamour (still with us?), it is so J.Lo — so very, very J.Lo — that it feels logical, too.

'Whether that means the film is, well, good, is probably a matter of how you feel about Lopez. Certainly, she’s brought everything to the table here: her talents, her fertile imagination and her wallet, too, self-financing when money fell through, to the tune of a reported $20 million.

'Talk about self-belief, which is the moral of the film, if expressed rather too quickly and conveniently. If you can’t love yourself, Lopez and co-writer Mark Walton tell us, you can’t really love anyone else.'

During the documentary, the mother-of-two acknowledged Ben's discomfort with stepping in the spotlight as a couple after facing intense media scrutiny when they first dated between 2002 and 2004.

'I don't think [Ben] is very comfortable with me doing all of this,' she said. 'But he loves me, he knows I'm an artist, and he's gonna support me in every way he can because he knows you can't stop me from making the music I made… he doesn't want to stop me. But that doesn't mean he's comfortable being the muse.'

Elsewhere in the documentary, Jennifer burst into tears as she confessed what her husband made her see in herself was 'moving'.

Welling up, she revealed: 'What he said and what he saw in me, and what he made me believe about myself, only comes from love.

'Because nobody else could have made me see that about myself. It's very moving.

'Because I didn't think much about myself and so the world didn't think much of me. That lined up.'

She said of their reunion: 'We're totally different people now and we're the same and we have the same love 100 percent. Like I'd never fallen out of love with you. I had to just put it over here.'

The couple got engaged near the end of 2002 but broke the engagement in late 2003 before ending their relationship entirely in 2004.

In the intervening years, Jennifer married and divorced her third ex-husband Marc Anthony, with whom she welcomed her 15-year-old twins Max and Emme.

Meanwhile, Ben married and divorced Jennifer Garner, with whom he amicably co-parents three children.

Jennifer Lopez broke down in tears as she discussed what her husband Ben Affleck 'saw' in her in her new documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told

The hitmaker became emotional in the documentary as she spoke about her husband and how he has helped improve her self-confidence

The Prime Video doc is the third installment of her $20M media homage to her husband Ben Affleck , which includes the semi-autobiographical film, This Is Me... Now: A Love Story, about her highly scrutinised love life

Elsewhere in the documentary, Lopez burst into tears as she confessed what her husband made her see in herself was 'moving'.

Welling up, she revealed: 'What he said and what he saw in me, and what he made me believe about myself, only comes from love.

'Because nobody else could have made me see that about myself. It's very moving. Because I didn't think much about myself and so the world didn't think much of me. That lined up.'

She said of their reunion: 'We're totally different people now and we're the same and we have the same love 100 percent. Like I'd never fallen out of love with you. I had to just put it over here.'

Affleck also addressed his alcohol issues in the documentary, comparing his struggle with his wife's 'need for love'.

He shared: 'The thing you discover, like you do with alcohol, is that there isn't enough alcohol in all the liquor stores in the world to fill up that thing.

'In Jennifer's case I don't think there's enough followers or records or any of that stuff to still that part of you that still feels a longing and a pain.'

When it came to casting her movie, Lopez struggled with enlisting celebrity cameos, as she shared which A-listers were given the opportunity.

Elsewhere in the documentary, Lopez burst into tears as she confessed what her husband made her see in herself was 'moving'

In December, Lopez admitted she and Affleck 'both have PTSD' from the glare of the spotlight on their first romance

From reality stars, to singers and actors, Lopez invited a range of celebrities to take part in her Prime movie.

One of the singer's team members claimed Snoop Dogg, Khloe Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Vanessa Hudgens, Lizzo and Ariana Grande were either unavailable or said no following her offer.

Lopez also wanted Jason Momoa and Jennifer Coolidge to star in her movie.

Big names who appeared in her move included: Jane Fonda (Sagittarious), Trevor Noah (Libra), Kim Petras (Virgo), Post Malone (Leo), Keke Palmer (Scorpio), Sofia Vergara (Cancer), Jenifer Lewis (Gemini), Jay Shetty (Aries), Neil deGrasse Tyson (Taurus) and Sadhguru (Pisces).

Lopez's beloved husband played Rex Stone/ Biker, while her long-time friend Fat Joe played her therapist in the movie.

In December, Lopez admitted she and Affleck 'both have PTSD' from the glare of the spotlight on their first romance.

After their broken engagement, they both went on to marry and divorce other people before eventually finding their way back into each other's arms.

She shared that 'we both have PTSD' from their initial experience, but explained that in their present life as a married couple they're 'older' and 'wiser.'

J-Lo added: 'We also know what’s important, what’s really important in life, and it’s not so much what other people think. It’s about being true to who you are.'

Lopez and Affleck first met on the set of Gigli and embarked on a relationship that became a flashpoint of attention.

Their eye-catching public appearances, accompanied by the box office disaster of Gigli, were the subject of constant conversation.

Jennifer poured fuel on the fire with the release of This Is Me... Then, which was dedicated to her boyfriend and featured songs about him including Dear Ben.

'Bennifer' became a lightning rod for adulation and then mockery, including a memorably acidic parody of them on an episode of South Park.

Trey Parker, co-creator of the cartoon, later asserted he heard gossip that the production assistants started quoting the spoof on the set of one of J-Lo's films.

'She got so mad and had to fire people,' alleged Trey, who is also one of the voice stars on the show. 'But she kept hearing it in the distance.'

How Jennifer Lopez has fallen from grace due to 'bonkers' documentary, lack of tour sales and album debuting at 38 in the Billboard Top 200

J Lo's tour rebrand would 'get everyone talking about it'

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