She still winks and pouts in videos like it’s 1999 when the world was watching her Waiting for Tonight and the earth spun towards Y2K. When the average 54-year-old is asked about the joys of getting old, it doesn’t involve getting in and out of cars. Not Jennifer Lopez. She is still throwing all the captivating salsa and mambo dance moves at the camera and that too wearing a bridal gown. It’s just another day in the life of JLo, whose ninth album arrives next month. Meanwhile, she has a single and a video for the world — Can’t Get Enough.

Her February 16 release, This Is Me... Now, is the companion album to This is Me… Then from 2002. The album made many believe she was “just” Jenny from the Block, inspiring young girls to enjoy the JLo touch.

Jennifer Lopez appeared as a dancer in Janet Jackson's 1993 video, That's The Way Love Goes

The JLos from our blocks too have aged and some have weathered the storm as well as the girl from the Bronx. The messaging is simple for her forthcoming album: Our bodies age but the spirit remains forever young.

“It feels like it’s been 22 years in the making, honestly, because we announced it on the 20th anniversary of This Is Me… Then album,” she has told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1. Lowe, of course, is the Oprah Winfrey in the world of music and singers love to pour their hearts out before him.

“The funny thing is, 20 years ago, people thought that I was oversharing as far as my personal life went, and so I kind of shut down and got very, very much more private, even though people knew who I was with and kind of assumed what was happening. I was always very quiet about what was truly the truth going on in my life. It wasn’t until now where I had gone through so many different things and really done some work on myself and really did heal some parts of myself to get to a point where I could welcome in something that was healthy and truly loving,” she told Lowe.

Growth moments

The album will arrive on February 16 accompanied by a documentary, directed by Dave Meyers. The Lopez we have before us in 2024 has weathered decades of storm and public romances and breakups, yet she has managed to switch gears effortlessly from being a dancer to singer to actress to producer. You need to see the video of Janet Jackson’s 1993 song That’s The Way Love Goes to appreciate the girl dancing in the background and then realise where she is today.

JLo at this year's Golden Globe Awards

“You cannot be ready for something, I’ve learned in life. You wish you were. You don’t understand what’s happening. It’s all falling apart, and you’re like: ‘Wait a minute. What’s going on?’ Then you have to live a little and go through things and figure yourself out. The only way you can do that is by really digging deep and taking a cold hard look at yourself and your patterns and the things that you do, and then maybe you can get to a point where you have moments where you’re like: ‘Oh, oh, I get that. Oh, I was doing that. Oh, I needed to grow in this way. I needed to do that.’ It kind of all comes together. When you then get to another point in your life where you’re like, something really beautiful happens to you, are you able to go back and look at the things that were more challenging and more the growth moments?” she has said on the Apple Music 1 show.

Here’s a star who can give shape to the preamble of Club Ageless whose members are defined by goals and capabilities rather than a number. She makes us wonder whether 50 is the new 30 rather than 40.

The new album wasn’t planned. “I was like, ‘Oh, and then in 20 years I’m going to make the This Is Me… Now album.’ I had no idea even when I was naming it, This Is Me… Then, that it would be such a profound thing so much later… that it would have this destiny to it. That honestly for me was a miracle that came out of the blue, but when it did, it so naturally kind of poured out of me to go back and make an album because really I didn’t think about, ‘Oh, I’m going to make This Is Me… Now album.’ I was like, I’m just inspired to make music again in a way that I did when I first fell in love in that way and then from there it was like, ‘Okay, now I’m reflecting on what happened then and what happened now and how everything in between informed that and got me here and oh my God, this is crazy’,” she told Lowe.

Lopez has experienced second-chance romance and from videos on social media, she runs a tight ship with Ben Affleck. On the movie front, frothy pop flicks abound. In whatever she does, the message is simple: Rekindle your love for life. And the new album “is a culmination of a whole life in a way”. True, Jenny from the “block” is now more like Jenny who owns a yacht but what about chutzpah? She retains that magic touch