Rating:
Genre:
R&B
Release Date: 03/01/2005
The last time
Jennifer Lopez made an album -- 2002's
This Is Me... Then -- she was deeply love with actor/Academy Award-winning screenwriter
Ben Affleck, a relationship immortalized in the video for
"Jenny From the Block" and
"Dear Ben," a
ballad that rivals
Billy Bob Thornton's
"Angelina" as the greatest celebrity love song of the 2000s. Of course, the relationship was also immortalized in the notorious
Martin Brest disaster
Gigli, released eight months after
This Is Me, and that film's abysmal box office was the beginning of the end for the couple, whose engagement was called off in early 2004.
Lopez rebounded quickly with a marriage to
Latin pop singer
Marc Anthony and with the new romance came an opportunity to restart her career -- hence
Rebirth, the title of her fourth album. While she doesn't avoid the subject of her highly publicized romantic life, she does bury two seemingly confessional
ballads at the end of the record (not counting the album-concluding reprise of the opening single,
"Get Right"). Voyeurs may find interest in
"He'll Be Back" (a tune not written by
Lopez, but a breakup song that certainly recalls the Bennifer saga) and
"(Can't Believe) This Is Me" -- a collaboration with her new husband that suggests
Lopez may not have learned the lesson of
Gigli -- but they're easily the worst moments on an album that's otherwise a sleek, sexy blast. Apart from those turgid
ballads,
Rebirth is a straight-ahead
dance album, alternating between sweet, breezy
pop tunes like the irresistible
"Still Around" and hard-driving club tracks like the surprisingly heavy, infectious
"Cherry Pie." Lopez may not be a flashy singer, but she's appealing on record precisely because she and her collaborators -- chief among them executive producer
Cory Rooney -- know those limitations and present them in tuneful packages with big, exciting beats. Since it doesn't deviate from the blueprint she's followed on her first three albums, it's hard to call this record a literal creative rebirth, but song for song,
Rebirth has more energy and better hooks than her other albums. It may not be deep, but it sure is fun -- and after the tumult of 2003 and 2004,
Lopez sure does deserve to have a little fun.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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