Jennifer Lopez is giving us new music to ring in the new year. On the 20th anniversary of the debut of her 2002 album This Is Me… Then, Lopez announced her upcoming album set to drop in 2023, fittingly named This Is Me… Now. The “Marry Me” artist shared her big news Friday with a dramatic Instagram teaser, which shows her This Is Me… Then album artwork transforming into the present version of herself.
Lopez hasn’t set an exact premiere date for her new music, but did reveal the track list for This Is Me… Now, which includes songs alluding to her romance with husband Ben Affleck such as “Mad in Love,” “Dear Ben pt. ll” and “Greatest Love Story Never Told.” The Grammy winner previously teased to Vogue that her new album would be the most emotionally raw and honest project yet.
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“This album is the most honest thing I have done, a culmination of who I am as a person and an artist,” she told the magazine earlier this month. “People think they know things about what happened to me along the way … but they really have no idea, and a lot of times they get it so wrong. There’s a part of me that was hiding a side of myself from everyone. And I feel like I’m at a place in my life, finally, where I have something to say about it.”
This Is Me… Now is the first full-length album Lopez has released since 2014, when she dropped A.K.A., although she did drop a number of singles off of the successful soundtrack for her movie Marry Me earlier this year. The new album will be a full-circle moment for the singer, who was dating her now-husband Affleck during the production of This Is Me… Then and even dedicated the album to him. The album would go on to peak at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 200, and sold more than six million copies worldwide.
Lopez opened up about rekindling her romance with Affleck following the end of their initial engagement in 2004 to Vogue ahead of her album release. “The two of us, we lost each other and found each other. … All we’ve ever wanted was to kind of come to a place of peace in our lives where we really felt that type of love that you feel when you’re very young and wonder if you can have that again,” she said.
