Jennifer Lopez: The Business Of A Woman Making A Career Out Of Her Love Life – Why She Failed Where Taylor Swift Succeeded

It’s pretty fair to say that year’s AMA’s Awards show was very much a disappointment. Perhaps the most exciting thing that happened was that Gloria Estefan came back to perform for the first time in 30 years. Another big surprise came when Jennifer Lopez performed a rendition of 2025 greatest hits, including ones by Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and more, and kissed her male AND female dancers during her set. She was this year’s host. The biggest disappointment, or even two disappointments, was when Taylor Swift didn’t show up at the event, as well as didn’t win ANY of the awards she was nominated for. The singer holds the record for the most AMA wins with 40 under her belt, a groundbreaking achievement.

Trust me, I’ll have a ton to say about Taylor Swift and her mastery in my next blog entry. For now, however, I want to take things in another direction; a much different direction than you probably thought in reading this first portion of this entry. Lopez is a successful artist in her own right. She’s a singer and actress dominating the charts. But her personal life is talked about much more in the press than anything else that she’s achieved in her long-standing career. Most recently, she divorced Ben Affleck following a 3 year courtship. She was also previously engaged to him in 2002 before calling off their wedding plans in 2004. She then quickly married Marc Anthony and had two children with him, Max and Emme. The duo for divorced in 2011. All together, Lopez was married 3 times and engaged 5. For that reason, and not for that reason alone, the media has turned on her and mocked her for ‘inability to keep a man.’

And with the release of her album, This Is Me…Now, and the musical film that followed thereafter, This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, it felt as though the mockery had just begun. Last year, JLo spoke to USA Today of the making of the musical film, ‘This was going to be the quintessential thing I have been searching for and wanted to say about love. I’ve been on this search for so long, since people first met me and my first record came out and even before that in my first movie role, where I’ve been on this journey trying to figure this thing out for myself. This (album) kind of closed the loop in a way. It captures this moment to really say the things I want to say about love, and that is that true love does exist and some things are forever. Please don’t give up on that because that’s all that matters in life … love.’

Many TikTok users, in particular, labeled this creative move as creative narcissism. Elizabeth Cohen, an associate professor at West Virginia University who researches psychology of media and pop culture, told USA Today, ‘There’s pleasure in watching rich people who seem to have it all and these (moments) remind us that, well, they really don’t have it all. And maybe they don’t even necessarily deserve it all.’ In the documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, JLo spoke about her childhood trauma and revealed that it was what caused her to have experienced bad relationships in her adult life. She said, ‘When I was growing up, I was always looking for somebody to make me feel love.’ Affleck, who is a recovering alcoholic, compared Lopez’s emotional needs to those of an alcoholic who can never get enough to drink.

I watched the documentary, and I thought it was brilliant. I also watched (or at least tried to) watch the musical film. I lasted about 7 minutes. It was absurd. Everything about it was absurd. Even me getting high to it didn’t help me get into the groove of its absurdity. And nevertheless, it showcased heavy elements of abuse in a relationship. Somehow, by seeing the storyline unfold, JLo’s love life and career choices made perfect sense, and the mockery could no longer be justified. JLo’s aim with the musical film and documentary was to connect with her fans. In my eyes, she did, and more, but in the eyes of public perception, she made an even more of a fool of herself. The documentary, which explored her relationship with Ben Affleck, was met with mixed reactions and has contributed to the wave of online mockery. Some found it to be a self-serving attempt to portray herself in a positive light. Some called it a performance to try to make herself look more relatable rather than authenticity.

JLo is known to overshare, and she’s not the only one. We have celebrities like Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling who are rarely ever seen together publicly. We know they’re together. We know they have two children together. But we rarely ever see them or hear from them. We have Leighton Meester and Adam Brody, who we rarely ever get to see or hear from. They pose together when supporting each other’s work, as well as appeared in movies and TV shows together. But we practically know nothing about their relationship. We know they’re married and have kids together. All millennials in the world are rejoiced whenever they’re seen together, as they still have such a hard time believing that OC’s Seth Cohen and Gossip Girl’s Blair Waldorf are married in real life. We also have Mindy Kailing, who’s managed to keep the identity of the father of her 3 children, as well as her children’s faces, despite the years-long rumours that her ex-boyfriend, BJ Novak is the father. We do, however, know that he’s the godfather. We also have Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet, who, after more than 2 years oh dating, are just now starting to be more public and be seen together, though never share one another on social media, and Jenner never shared details of her relationship on The Kardashians, nor did he ever appear on the show. On the flip side, there’s Jenner’s sister, Kourtney Kardashian, and her husband, Travis Barker, who never fail to overshare about their love life. Can you imagine your parents posting a montage of the sex-filled mini break you were conceived on? That’s exactly the type of information their son, Rocky, will have access to. And then there’s Benny Blanco grabbing Selena Gomez’s breast in every picture he posts is his equivalent of a photo dump. They also released an entire collaborative album, I Said I Love You First, which made them heavily rely on oversharing their relationship to promote their work of art.

Some things would’ve been left unsaid; up to the imagination. But that’s just not how JLo does things. In her documentary, which was a behind-the-scenes look into how the musical film accompanying her album was made, we saw Jane Fonda, who made a cameo in the film and starred with JLo in the 2005 film, Monster-In-Law, tell the singer-actress, ‘You know, every other photograph is the two of you kissing and the two of you hugging.’ JLo, in turn, laughed it off and told her, ‘That’s just how we are.’ When I watched that particular scene unfold, I wanted to scream at JLo and tell her, ‘Nah, Girl. That’s how YOU are.’ Affleck is an actor and director in his own right. He’s known to be notoriously private. While he was in a relationship with JLo, it was a time where we saw him the most. In the documentary, Affleck appeared repeatedly for short periods of time, and he was very much supportive of his then-wife’s endeavour, even if it was at his expense. While showing his support, he also repeatedly indicated that he was uncomfortable with sharing their private relationship so publicly. He said, ‘Things that are private, I’d always felt are sacred and special because they’re private, so this was an adjustment.’

JLo knew that her husband was uncomfortable, and yet, didn’t seem to care enough to make adjustments. She said in the documentary, ‘And then there’s the personal story of Ben and I that has never been told. I don’t think hes very comfortable with me doing all of this, but he knows I’m an artist. He loves me.’ There’s artistry and then there’s sharing private love letters that Affleck wrote her with her dancers and everyone she worked with. I personally found this particular move to be absurd. There was absolutely no compromise in their relationship. In her 2022 Netflix documentary, Halftime, JLo opened up about how the media’s desire to cover her personal life overshadowed everything that was happening in her career. She said, ‘I just had a really low self-esteem. I really believed a lot of what they said, which is I wasn’t any good — that I wasn’t a good singer, I wasn’t a good actress, I wasn’t a good dancer. I wasn’t good at anything. I just didn’t even belong here. Why wouldn’t I just go away? There were many times where I was like, ‘I think I’m just gonna quit. I had to really figure out who I was and believe in that and not believe anything else.’

And so, it suddenly seemed as though JLo’s oversharing method was a way for her to take control of the narrative that’s portrayed of her in the media and the press. Rather than having complete strangers speak on her behalf, she now does it herself. It could also be that she overshares because she’s unhappy with herself and trying to prove something to outsiders that isn’t actually there. They say that the happiest people are ones that share the least about themselves and their relationships on social media. But…in this day and age, there’s also the power of influence, which is a whole entire career in itself. Now the question remains – Does JLo really need to be an influencer on top of being a singer, actress and a businesswoman? The answer to this question is no; she doesn’t need to be an influencer. She doesn’t even need to have a social media presence to be successful. She’s been in the entertainment industry long enough; having gained fame when she starred as Quintanilla-Pérez in the 1997 biographical film about her following her 1995 murder. Since then, she’s dominated movie box office and music charts time and time again. She’s taken a lot of risks in her career, such as choosing not to get paid for her role in Hustler, but instead only relying on commissions. And yet, JLo does so anyway, no matter what it costs her; even if it’s her relationship. For that she’s been scrutinized and labeled as being desperate.

This is a subjective interpretation. I personally this as her seeking validation from the public because she wants to feel the love and attention she feels she deserves but never received in her life., as well as her taking control of her career that the media and press tried so hard to take over the narrative in the 2000’s and 2010’s. In a sense, it feels as though her relationship with Affleck was more like a business move than anything else. Following the end of her relationship and broken engagement with Alex Rodriguez in 2021, JLo jumped at making her rekindled relationship with Affleck public. Her personal life was on a high. Her career, in contrast, was…at a low; or at least by JLo’s own standards.

JLo has made some great, as well as not so great, movies in the past few years. Her music career, however, was on a decline. With her rekindled relationship with Affleck being the promotion and marketing tool that she needed, seeing it as a nostalgic mania for those who’d been around for the 2000’s Jenny From The Block era, JLo suddenly an opportunity to make a musical comeback with a remake of her 2000’s album, This Is Me…Then, a somewhat of a public love letter, if you want to call it that, to Affleck during the time that they were first engaged. Her efforts proved to be a complete failure, and for a number of reasons. First and foremost, no one was actually interested in her relationship with Affleck; not as they used to back in the 2000’s. Second, the album lacked a strong Latin fanbase support, and a there was perceived lack of market research. Some also questioned the album’s musical quality and the overall artistic direction of the project. Reddit users also raised concerns about the project’s authenticity and the perceived disconnect between Lopez’s persona and her music, particularly in relation to her Jenny From The Block image. 

When the album was released in February 2024, it debuted at a paltry No. 38 before completely dropping from the BillBoard 200 charts very quickly thereafter. It was JLos first album in 10 years. Her former publicist, Rob Shuter, said of this failure, ‘Jennifer’s always been a marketing and PR genius but her biggest miscalculation here is that she thinks the world is still interested in Ben and Jennifer’s love story. But no one cares about Bennifer anymore. The world has moved on. What we’re seeing is Jennifer not learning a lesson from the past. I wrote the breakup announcement with J. Lo on the phone. She was devastated. One reason they both gave for the breakup was that Ben didn’t like all the media scrutiny. The fact that she’s gone back to the very behavior that was an issue for them in the past —  this big project with the album and the documentary all about their love — is strange.’

The biggest problem with JLo isn’t even the fact that she has a tendency to overshare about her personal life. It’s not that she decided to make a musical career out of her personal life either. Many celebrities, particularly musicians, do the same. Just look at Taylor Swift. She, too, made an entire career out of her personal life. Swift has been in the entertainment industry, and just as we think her success couldn’t get any bigger, it does. The Eras Tour is the most commercially successful tour in history, generating over $2 billion in revenue. The tour, which spanned almost two years and 149 shows, broke numerous attendance and revenue records, doubling the gross ticket sales of any other concert tour. It also had a significant cultural and economic impact, sparking a global phenomenon and boosting local economies in the cities it visited. The tour earned over $2 billion in ticket sales, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time. Swift filled stadiums with an average of 72,500 people per show, with many concerts drawing over 90,000 fans, becoming a a cultural phenomenon, with fans creating friendship bracelets, attending “Taylorgating” (parking lot parties), and generating significant online buzz. 

The tour was something very few artists had accomplished…EVER. Not even Elton John could keep up. In just eight months, Swift’s Eras Tour did something no other artist has ever done – gross over $1 billion on a single tour. This number is even more staggering when compared to John’s farewell tour, which lasted a total of five years, had 328 shows, and accumulated $939 million. Swift was able to do the same with just 152 shows. In hindsight, Swift took over the world between 2023 and 2024. She, as well as her tour, became legendary; even in spite the controversial ticketing frenzy the tour caused. Swift also broke a Ticketmaster record with more than 2.4 million tickets sold — the most by an artist in a single day — in the presale alone. It was a celebration of her now-almost 20year career. It was a celebration of everything she’d achieved and more. Let’s also not forget that she did all this while going through a personal turmoil. She started off the tour soon after breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, Joe Alwyn. She went on to start a relationship with Travis Kelce, and also released the re-recorded albums Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in 2023 and The Tortured Poets Society in 2024, as well as various editions of Midnights, music videos for Karma, I Can See You, and I Can Do It with a Broken Heart, and the single Cruel Summer.

JLo, on the other hand, didn’t have much luck. She cancelled her This Is Me… Live world tour in July last year. The official reason she gave for the cancellation was that she wanted to spend more time with family. Of course, in the world of entertainment politics, we know that there was much more to it. With the album being a complete flop and the movie that came thereafter being laughable, tickets sales for the tour were underwhelming. Beforehand, in March, seven tour dates were cancelled due to poor ticket sales. JLo attempted to salvage the situation by rebranding it from a promotional effort for the album to a greatest hits tour, but to no avail. At the same time, rumours began to swirl that her marriage to Affleck was crumbling. A month later, on what was supposed to be their wedding anniversary, news broke that Bennifer 2.0 was over. They were in the midst of a divorce.

There’s no denying that both JLo and Taylor Swift are both talented women. But there are drastic differences between the two that really are a make-it-or-break-it in the world of entertainment politics. Both women made their individual ways of making a living and profiting from their personal lives. Both have been scrutinized for it by society and the weird pleasure that people from the outside obtain by a woman ‘failing’ in her personal life, and in JLo’s case, her career. And yet, despite having a similar path in their respective careers, one of the two women saw a massive success, whereas the other saw a decline. Swift’s immense success in the music industry can be attributed to a combination of factors including her songwriting skills, versatility in genre, business acumen, and strong fan engagement. Jennifer Lopez, while a successful pop star and actress, doesn’t have the same degree of global influence or control over her career in the same way as Swift. To break things down more thoroughly:

Taylor Swift’s Success Factors: 

• Writing and Storytelling: Swift is known for her autobiographical songwriting, creating relatable and emotionally resonant music that resonates with a wide audience. 
• Genre Versatility: She has successfully transitioned through various genres, including country, pop, and indie folk, demonstrating her adaptability and keeping her music relevant. 
• Business Acumen: Swift is not only a successful artist but also a shrewd businesswoman, leveraging her platform and influence to control her own music and brand. 
• Fan Engagement: She actively engages with her fans online and in person, fostering a strong sense of community and loyalty. 
• Re-recording Master Recordings: Swift’s decision to re-record her albums, gaining full ownership of her music, was a significant move that empowered her and influenced other artists. 
• Marketing and Promotion: Swift is a skilled marketer, utilizing various strategies to promote her music and build her brand. 

Jennifer Lopez’s Success: 

• Pop Star Power: JLo is a highly successful pop star known for her dance-pop music and powerful performances. 
• Acting Career: She has also achieved success as an actress, starring in numerous films and television shows. 
• Brand Recognition: JLo has built a strong brand reputation as a fashion icon and entrepreneur. 

Why Swift Might Be Considered More Successful: 

• Global Influence: Swift’s music has achieved a level of global reach and cultural impact that is arguably greater than JLo’s. 
• Control Over Career: Swift’s ability to control her own music and brand, through re-recording and other strategic decisions, gives her more agency and influence over her career. 
• Fan Base: Swift’s fanbase is known for its loyalty and dedication, which contributes to her ongoing success. 

Swift is constantly changing; constantly evolving. Not a single album she’s ever released is the same. That’s why her fans love her. They also love her because she genuinely cares about them. She takes the time to get to know her target audience; see what they like and what they don’t like. In fact, she’s known for her ability to connect with fans on a personal level, pushing the boundaries of music, and adapting to changing industry landscapes. She brings out a deep, meaningful, personal connection with her fans through storytelling. She’s skilled at mastering her art while also being relatable with those that listen to it; no matter what age group they are. She also actively engages with her fans, fostering a strong sense of community. That’s why her fans are so loyal to her.

Even more so, Swift is a skilled businesswoman. Over the years, especially since her Reputation era, she’s carefully crafted her image and brand, consistently evolving while staying true to her core values. Nothing she’s ever done since then was by mistake or just a coincidence. Over the years, she’s made calculated decisions regarding album releases, marketing, and social media, impacting the music industry. That’s what makes people from the outside looking in wanting to see more of her. But most notably so, her ability to make every single one of her fans feel like she’s their friend is uncanny. Throughout her 20 years in the business, Swift has become a cultural icon, influencing trends and driving discussions in and beyond the music industry. More importantly, she’s used her platform to advocate for artists’ rights and social issues. 

All this is exactly what JLo failed to do in her music career. She’s been stuck in her Jenny From The Block era for 20+ years now. The song itself was about her desire to remain humble and grounded despite her success, reflecting her roots in the Bronx. Back in 2003, when it was initially released, the song resonated with audiences and helped establish JLo as a relatable star who had humble beginnings. Swift actually invited JLo to perform the song, one that she called her ‘hair brush song’ when she headlined the Red tour in 2013. And that’s all it is now – a hair brush song. More so, JLo failed where Taylor Swift succeeded; or rather is it that Taylor Swift succeeded where JLo failed? No matter how you view it, what’s definitely true is that throughout her entire career, Taylor Swift did everything that JLo didn’t – break barriers.

JLo did a brave thing at the AMA awards show this year, as she performed for an entire Taylor Swift fan base who were utterly disappointed by her absence. But even this bravery couldn’t save her. A single LGBTQ kiss put JLo on the map again. It was a yet another moment reminiscing the 2000’s where Britney Spears and Madonna kissed at the MTV VMAs in 2003. It was certainly an ‘OMFG’ moment at the time; one that made everyone’s jaw drop. If social media existed back then, we wouldn’t hear the end of it. The big difference, of course, is that 22 years ago, Britney and Madonna didn’t need the attention. JLo does. The move was cheesy. Unlike Spears’ kiss with Madonna, which felt to be an artistic move, JLo’s girl-on-girl action seemed cheesy. But at least the dancing was on-freaking-point. It was phenomenal. Following the awards ceremony, JLo announced her upcoming Vegas residency, and my reaction to that was…WHY?!

Following her divorce from Affleck, JLo made an emphasis that she wanted to spend as much time with her family. And she did just that. She even spent time with Affleck’s children following their divorce, particularly with Violet, his oldest daughter with Jennifer Garner. With that being said, she also made it a priority to focus on her well-being and embracing her new chapter as a single mom, highlighting her confidence and strength. She also continued to act in films, with projects including such as Unstoppable and Atlas. She’s also worked on Kiss of the Spider Woman. On top of that, she’s been busy working as a producer on several new upcoming projects. She’s also been busy in her entrepreneurial ventures. In 2022, she opened up about her plans to give 600,000 Latina entrepreneurs $14 billion in loans by 2030 as she felt that they were undervalued. She told Entrepreneur at the time, ‘I’m thinking to myself, Wait a minute. I didn’t make but 0.01% of that. I’m here, building this brand on my back — doing these movies, singing these songs, defining myself by my style, by the things that I choose. When you start off as an artist, you’re just happy to get whatever you can. You can’t believe your good fortune. I remember myself back then: I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll do the perfume! Oh yes, I love fashion, I’ll do a clothing line!’ I’ll do this, I’ll do that. I was just so happy to be here. I realized, at a certain point, I’m still working my ass off, and everybody’s collecting checks.’

In that particular interview, JLo was specifically speaking of her perfume venture reaching $1 billion in sales. That year, by that point in her career, she generated a reported net worth of $400 million, sold over 80 million records globally while, at the time, the latest album being released in 8 years, and her films grossed over $3 billion. What’s my point in all of this, you ask? It’s because these numbers make it clear that JLo literally doesn’t need to be working as a musical artist anymore. She does so because she can; because she wants to. But no matter how hard she tries, she keeps on failing. She has enough money to do whatever the f*ck she wants, but still chooses to do music even though she keeps failing at it. The thing is, however, she could very much be a success story…if only she did things differently and had a mindset similar to Taylor Swift!