As with my Maroon 5 playlist last year, I wanted to look at the halftime performer for the upcoming Super Bowl because it's an opportunity to get back to this column's original mission of taking a look at the albums of an artist who's generally regarded as a hit single factory whose full-lengths are comparatively inconsequential. I took Jennifer Lopez for granted for a long time as a middling pop star, even when I enjoyed her singles they tended to be the 2nd-tier hits ("Feelin' So Good," "Play," "I'm Glad," First Love," etc.). But I thought she actually finally made a really consistent, impressive album, A.K.A., in 2014. And that's bittersweet, because she's seemingly abandoned the album format since then, releasing almost a dozen non-album singles over the past few years, many of them big hits in the Latin pop world (where the big artists frequently release a ton of singles that aren't attached to albums).

Jennifer Lopez deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. That's The Way
2. Open Off My Love
3. So Good
4. Cherry Pie
5. Walking On Sunshine (Metro Remix)
6. You Belong To Me
7. The Way It Is
8. A.K.A. featuring T.I.
9. Whatever You Wanna Do
10. It's Not That Serious
11. We Gotta Talk
12. Hypnotico
13. Forever
14. Still
15. Too Late
16. That's Not Me
17. Emotions
18. Por Arriesgarnos
19. Dear Ben
20. Still Around

Tracks 2, 10 and 15 from On The 6 (1999)
Tracks 1, 11 and 16 from J.Lo (2001)
Track 5 from J to tha L-O! The Remixes (2002)
Tracks 6, 14 and 19 from This Is Me... Then (2002)
Tracks 4, 9 and 20 from Rebirth (2005)
Track 18 from Como Ama una Mujer (2007)
Track 7 and 13 from Brave (2007)
Track 12 from Love? (2011)
Tracks 3, 8 and 17 from A.K.A. (2014)

Jennifer Lopez launched her music career at the moment when her film career was at a tipping point and she was dating one of the biggest stars in music. But even to the extent that On The 6 is Sean Combs setting his starmaking machinery on its highest setting and launching J.Lo into the pop stratosphere, it's kind of a bland blockbuster. Still, she got some nice Rodney Jerkins tracks like "That's The Way" and "It's Not That Serious" on her first couple albums before she split with Diddy and did the remixes with Ja Rule, and I think she actually became a little more consistent and a little more self-assured in the vocal booth after her reign of really big hits ran its course. That said, it's a little funny to listen to these songs and hear so many choruses that are stacked with harmonies that are clearly not Lopez's voice, all the jokes about her not even singing her own records have a little truth to them.

Most modern female pop superstars are if not great vocalists then at least really in command of their sound and how they adapted it to different eras like Madonna or Janet Jackson. J.Lo (who, amazingly, got her famous nickname from Oliver Stone on the set of U Turn) never really operated at that level, but she's managed some real longevity, transcending some other middling singing talents like Paula Abdul and kinda getting near the level of, say, Britney. Lately it feels like she's got more gas in the tank as a movie star -- I haven't seen Hustlers yet but apparently people thought she deserved an Oscar nod for that one -- but the Super Bowl gig is a testament to just how big a name she still is in music.

I had to include something from J to tha L-O! The Remixes since it was pretty huge for a remix album, in a way the peak of her career -- one of her two #1 albums and her only album with two #1 singles. The original "Walking On Sunshine" is one of the best songs on J.Lo and the remix is pretty great too. And it sort of predicted the full-on dance pop sound that she'd embrace on later records with stuff like the Lady Gaga-penned "Hypnotico." When you think about it, she's had such a weird mixed bag of R&B, dance, and latin pop over the years. I kind of expected Lopez's only Spanish language album Como Ama una Mujer to be upbeat stuff like her Gloria Estefan-penned hit "Let's Get Loud," but it's a really mellow ballad-heavy album largely written and produced by her then-husband Marc Anthony, whose voice is often audible on the backing vocals on some songs, including "Por Arriesgarnos."

I still think A.K.A. is probably her best album but there's gems here and there across the catalog. She got good album tracks produced by Diddy and Mario Winans ("That's Not Me"), Tim & Bob ("Cherry Pie"), Big Boi ("Still Around"), and Hit-Boy well before he started making hits ("Forever"). "Whatever You Wanna Do" is a pretty good Rich Harrison track from that silly moment when J.Lo tried to yoink "1 Thing" from Amerie and had to settle for "Get Right."

This Is Me...Then's opener "Still" was co-written by Rich Shelton, Loren Hill, and Kevin Veney, a trio of Baltimore producers who I've met and talked to through their work with local rappers like Bossman (Hill also co-produced Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" back in the day). One of the tracks on there that really surprised me was that Lopez did well with "You Belong To Me," an old Doobie Brothers deep cut that was a hit for Carly Simon. And of course I had to include "Dear Ben," which is kind of an instantly dated souvenir of a brief but infamous celebrity couple, much like Ariana Grande's "Pete Davidson."

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 7:33 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.