True Love Deluxe

by Jennifer Lopez

  So, when I stood up on the stage in city after city and said to people, “You’ve got to love yourself,” I really felt it. Because I was finally living it.

  LET’S GET LOUD

  “Turn up the lights!” I’d shout right after the end of “Let’s Get Loud.” “Let me get a look at everybody!” And no matter what city or country we were in, I loved to look out and see so many girls in the audience.

  “I see a lot of beautiful ladies out here tonight!” I’d say. “All my girls came out! Let me hear you!” I’d point the microphone out to the audience, and the women would all scream.

  In a lot of the places we performed, women don’t have as much of a voice as the men do, so this part of the show was always one of my favorites. It was like a competition. The women would yell and stomp their feet, and then I’d call out, “Where my papis at?” And the men would let out a roar.

  Back and forth I’d go—“Where my ladies . . . ? Papis, let me hear you!”—and I loved to hear how the ladies would let loose. The women were always louder than the men, and in their screams and shouts, I felt like they were shouting, We’re here. We’re not afraid. And you are going to hear us! Sometimes I’d go back and forth five or six times, talking to everybody, inviting them to let loose.

  Then I’d say, “We did a lot of songs for the ladies tonight . . . And, ladies, even though you obviously won, let’s do one song for the papis. But keep a close eye, because there’s something extra special in here for you.” And we’d launch into the song “Papi”—which seems like it would be for the guys, but really, it was for the ladies. At one point, the male dancers would take off their J.Lo tanks and throw them into the audience for the women to take home. A memento, from me to my girls, to remind them that we were in control that night. And then, for our last song of the night, an explosive finale—the biggest hit of them all: “On the Floor.”

  Dance the night away

  Live your life and stay out on the floor!

  —“ON THE FLOOR”

  I started “On the Floor” singing a cappella in Spanish, a slowed-down version of the chorus: “Llorando se fue y me dejó sola sin su amor . . .” (“He left crying and left me alone without his love . . .”) It was kind of a callback to where this journey had all started, both literally and figuratively. Every night it reminded me of what I’d been through and how far I’d come during the last year. I had been so afraid to embark on this journey, yet here I was at the end of it, feeling stronger than ever. My voice had grown, I had grown. I had changed so much. I wasn’t singing the way I did before—the fear was gone and I was better than I was when I started. I had found my voice; I had found myself. The journey was complete. I’d repeat the chorus line again, one more time, holding the last note as long as I could, echoing my newfound strength. The audience would yell in appreciation, and as soon as the first chords of “On the Floor” rang through the arena, all hell broke loose. We were all about to rip the roof off the place. A throne rose up from the floor, a moment for me to sit down (thank God—after two hours I had earned it!) while Pitbull’s verse ripped through the speakers. Two of the dancers would bring me a black silk robe with a beautiful feathered boa collar as I walked down the stairs while singing the first verse of the song. By the time we hit the chorus again, all twenty thousand people were jumping up and down in unison, fists in the air, singing:

  Laaa lalalalalala lalalalala la la laaaa

  Tonight we gonna be it on the floor . . .

  It was the perfect ending, a euphoric climax, a moment of true abandon where we were celebrating life to its fullest.

  The crowd loved it. The show is over . . . but there’s one more song to come, the encore, the song that brought the whole thing together . . .

  My dream as an artist is to share my experiences in a way that will touch people.

  “Dance Again” allowed me to create something beautiful from the ashes of the pain.

  This is my moment.

  DANCE AGAIN

  SEARCHING FOR THAT ONE LOVE

  In October of 2011, just three months after Marc and I announced our separation, I was scheduled to do a one-hour show at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, six months before the Dance Again tour even started. I didn’t have anything pulled together—we had to create the show from scratch.

  We were going to have to throw it together quickly. And once we had the whole thing figured out, there was still room for one more song. I decided I wanted to put in one of my new songs from the album I’d just released, LOVE?, one that people might not know that well, but that spoke to the situation everyone was still talking about—my divorce. I hadn’t made very many appearances since our official announcement, so people were naturally curious: How is she doing? Is she going to talk about it? Is she okay? I decided I’d give them something to satisfy that curiosity.

  The song, “One Love,” from an album aptly titled LOVE?, was another song I had written—this time with the help of Anesha and Antea, two writers who contributed to the album greatly—it was about a woman’s search for that one true love. When we wrote it, we made the verses very autobiographical, describing in detail some of my past relationships. It’s a really intimate, personal song, and as we started working up the choreography, I decided, What the hell. I might as well just lay it all out there. So we worked up a staging of the song that would walk everybody through my life and past loves, one by one.

  Is there one love, only once in a lifetime?

  It’s so hard to find, the perfect one to call mine.

  —“ONE LOVE”

  But the night of the show, I got cold feet.

  “This is too much,” I told Benny. “I feel too exposed putting all this out there right now. It’s too soon.” I told him I wanted to pull the song.

  “Listen,” he said. “You’re the one who’s always saying that being an artist is about baring your soul, about being introspective and making yourself vulnerable. So, if you feel vulnerable right now, then I guess we’re doing it right.”

  “I know. I know,” I said. “But I’m really uncomfortable doing this right now, okay?” Benny was firm, using all of my own arguments against me. He loved the number, and he loved the statement it was making. And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew he was right. All those beautiful words about what it means to be an artist were only words unless I followed through with them. So I did.

  And this is how it all played out . . .

  I was standing onstage, dressed in a white gown, and I sang the first verse of “One Love”:

  Took a shot with the bad boy from the block

  Picked my love right from the start,

  Mister Wrong, he plays his part.

  To my right on the stage stood a man wearing sunglasses and a gray suit and a woman dressed in that famous green Versace gown—Puffy and me. Their images were projected on a giant screen above my head, so nobody could miss the point. I kept singing:

  Back to the beginning, now round two,

  Try my luck with something new

  We danced until we said “I do,”

  My luck is bad, no more us, too, no me and you

  That was Cris and me, of course. To my left on the stage was a man with a shaved head, kneeling to propose to a woman. She had her hair in braids and was wearing a J.Lo shirt from the “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” video, in which we’d famously danced together. Now the next verse:

  It’s take three, could there be a part for me?

  Came and swept me off my feet

  Went nowhere but kept the ring,

  Once again, I’m lonely

  And to my right, a tall, handsome actor with a woman wearing a mint-green dress, her hair pulled into a bun—just as I’d dressed to go to the Oscars with Ben in 2003 . . . And then finally:

  Number four, you sang to me but I’m not sure

  So worn out but loved you so

  Made me wanna try once more

  and I couldn’t say no

  To my lef
t, a dashing man singing into a microphone while I danced around him in a short, sparkling dress—just as Marc and I had danced on the finale of American Idol only a few months earlier.

  Is there one love?

  Somebody that complements me

  And makes me wanna never leave

  Made just right for me

  Is there one love, one love, one love, one love . . . ?

  As the song came to an end, I had seen my four great love affairs flash before my eyes. I looked over at the dancers playing Marc and me, and the whole thing felt so surreal. I got stuck there looking at that image. As I sang the final line—“Is there one love?”—I turned and faced the audience and I just stood there, still, looking out over them for a moment that seemed like an eternity . . . They were feeling everything I was feeling, and I was feeling them right back. We were sharing a real moment. It’s one of those things that happens onstage when you truly connect with your audience.

  I couldn’t think of what to say. There were no words. All I could do was lift my hands and shrug my shoulders. At that moment, the place erupted. Their cheers transitioned from applause for the performance to a warm embrace of love. I could hear people screaming, “We love you, Jennifer!” and “Keep your head up!” and “It’s gonna be okay!” I felt so emotional. Tears started welling up in my eyes. It was like they were telling me they understood that I was a girl, like any other girl, just trying to get it right. In that moment, I thought, It doesn’t matter what the tabloids print, or the picture other people want to paint—I can come onstage and show people who I really am. It was a beautiful, powerful moment for me. For us.

  Months later, when I was planning the world tour, I realized I could never perform that song again. It was a one-time thing, perfect for that moment in time, but it would never be as special as it was that night. That song was all about my past. It was over now, and I was looking toward the future.

  BUILDING MYSELF BACK UP

  In those first few months after the split, I certainly wasn’t looking for anyone new—how could I? I had to get my shit together, to figure out why I’d been repeating the same pattern over and over every time I was with someone. I was sad, and hurt, and confused. But a part of me also felt stronger, like I had finally taken a step toward respecting myself. I lay low for a while, but when I started up again with projects that brought me back into the orbit of music and dancing, and we were in full pre-production of the tour, I began spending more time with Beau.

  Throughout that whole fall and into the New Year, as we got more and more into the heart of the show, I started moving past the hurt, and believing there could be something after that, believing that I could dance again.

  From the very beginning, whenever I would stumble, whenever I was unsure, Beau would say, “You got this. You can do it.” But he took it even further, telling me, “You don’t need me. You don’t need Benny. You don’t need your mom. You don’t need Marc. You are always going to be fine.”

  And I realized that before, my relationships were always tinged with fear: Is this going to last forever? Will he want to stay with me? Is this going to work? But now, I don’t worry about the future. My idea of forever has been shattered. Now, I just want to be happy. I want to be in the moment and learn to be happy.

  LOVING THE JOURNEY

  About three weeks before the end of the tour, all of us were feeling it. We still loved doing the show, but all of the travel, the hotel rooms, the time zone changes, and being away from home took its toll on everyone. Doing such a high-energy show, night after night after night, meant that everyone was feeling tired and rundown. And I knew that when the tour was finally finished, I wouldn’t miss all that packing and unpacking, bundling the kids up to get on buses and planes at three a.m., waking up and wondering what country we were in . . .

  But then, one night in the dressing room just before I was supposed to go onstage, a thought popped into my head: You are about to make so many people happy tonight. Where had that thought come from? I had no idea, but it made my heart swell with joy. And I realized what I was going to miss when the tour was over.

  When I decided to take on this tour, I was still at a low point from the divorce. I felt like things in my life had gone wrong, and doing this show was going to be my effort to make something go right—by using the experiences I’d had and choosing to learn from those difficult times rather than running from them.

  My one job was to go out there and make people happy every night, to help them jump and dance and sing along, to make their lives a little bit better. What a blessing! For years, I had been afraid to do a big tour like this one, but by the end of it, I felt like it had healed me. My original intention had been to share this message with the world, this thing that I had learned about loving yourself and overcoming adversity. I wanted to put it out there: You will live. You will love. You will dance again. Ámate. Love Yourself. I never expected it, but I wound up living my own affirmation, every single night. Life is kind of awesome that way; when you put things out there, they end up coming back to you.

  ON THE MEND

  Doing all those shows, and being embraced by the crowds, was a cathartic process that helped me heal. Benny could see it too, so one day toward the end of the tour he made a suggestion that he knew I wouldn’t have been able to consider even just a few weeks earlier.

  The last days of the tour were upon us, we had been talking about what we could do to make the final performance, in Puerto Rico, really special. By that point, we would have done more than seventy-five shows, and we both wanted to go out with a bang.

  “What do you think about having Marc come perform a song with you at that final show?” he asked.

  For a moment, I was speechless. My mind flew in two different directions: The professional side of me knew that doing a performance with Marc, who’s a legend in Puerto Rico, would be amazing. People would go crazy, especially if we kept it a secret until his actual appearance.

  I thought about that, thought about whether doing this would be like giving the spotlight to Marc on that American Idol finale, letting him have a moment that might have been mine. Was I falling into the same old pattern that I had spent months pulling myself out of? Would inviting him to sing with me be a step backward?

  By now I had learned to listen to myself. And when I got quiet and listened to my heart, I really didn’t believe it was. Asking Marc to join me onstage wasn’t about reverting to old habits. It was about showing the world—and proving to myself—that not only did we make it through the pain, but we came out the other side even stronger. We came out of it in a healthy way, and we were moving on as friends and as parents to our children. I really believed that making this offer to Marc was about moving forward, not backward.

  Life is kind of awesome that way. When you put things out there, they end up coming back to you.

  I still had to call Marc. He’s pretty picky about when he chooses to go onstage, and this performance would have that extra layer of prurient interest for people, so there was a good chance that he would immediately say no.

  I called him up, and at first we talked about the kids for a little while. Then I said, “Listen, Benny had this idea for the last show of the tour . . .” I told him the last two shows were going to be in Puerto Rico, right before Christmas, and of course we needed to figure out when he was going to see the kids around Christmastime anyway . . . so . . . “I was thinking . . . it could be really beautiful . . . if . . . you came down . . . and did ‘No Me Ames’ with me in those last shows.” Then we could figure out the holidays.

  He didn’t say anything, so I went on. “I think it would be amazing for the audience . . . I think they would love to see us together, knowing what we’ve been through, and that it could be a great message to everybody that we still support each other.” I told him it had been a difficult time for me, and I knew it wasn’t easy on him either, but that this could be good closure for us.

  “Mm-hmm . . . okay,” he said, and I
could practically hear the wheels turning.

  “We wouldn’t announce that you were coming—it would be kind of a surprise for everybody,” I said. “We’ll make it really great.”

  He said, “Well, it’s not a ‘no,’ but give me a day or two to think about it.” I thought that was pretty reasonable, considering everything.

  A few days later, he called back . . . It was a “Yes!” He would do it.

  WHERE WE’RE MEANT TO BE

  There is content at this location that is not currently supported for your device. The caption for this content is displayed below.

  The day before the show, Marc flew down to Puerto Rico to rehearse with us. Marc had recorded “No Me Ames” with me on my first record, so we didn’t need much rehearsal for the singing; we just needed to figure out the staging.