For much of the past year, it felt as though Jennifer Lopez was more of a punchline than an icon.
Her self-funded album This Is Me… Now flopped, and the accompanying film and documentary were widely mocked as indulgent, out of touch, and embarrassing.
Then, her tour was quietly cancelled amid reports of slow ticket sales. And if those headlines weren’t punishing enough, there came the most familiar narrative of all: the collapse of her second attempt at a fairytale with Ben Affleck.
Even more damningly (at least according to TikTok), she was coming across as uncool, inauthentic, and out of step with the moment – the kind of failure pop culture rarely forgives women for, particularly ones in their fifties who are expected to quietly fade into irrelevance.
In Hollywood PR terms, it looked like rock bottom. But if Lopez has proven anything across three decades in the spotlight, it’s that she doesn’t fade away easily.
Now, standing centre stage at her Up All Night Las Vegas residency, Lopez doesn’t look like a star clawing her way back, but like someone who has finally said ‘f*** it’ and arrived at her most whole, least apologetic form.
Between songs, slightly breathless and grinning, she addresses the crowd with the kind of loose, off-the-cuff confidence that once defined her early persona.
Reflecting on her first Vegas residency nearly a decade ago, she jokes that at the time she’d ‘only been married twice.’ Then she pauses, corrects herself, and adds with perfect timing: ‘That’s not true — it was only once. It felt like twice.’
She laughs. ‘I’m just kidding! It’s over — boom — we’re fine.’
The moment lands not because it’s shocking, but because it’s an unbothered, unfiltered acknowledgement of a narrative she has previously tried so fiercely to control.
Much of the backlash J-Lo has faced over the past year hinged on a specific accusation: that she was trying too hard to seem real.
Viral clips of her reminiscing about Bronx block parties and the now-infamous bodega order dissected on TikTok all fed into the idea that she was performing relatability rather than actually inhabiting it, as she once did when she was Jenny from the Block.
On stage, she brushes off the endless speculation about her life with good humour that feels genuine: ‘But it is funny, I do laugh at some of the things people say sometimes and one of the things is, when she takes pictures she smiles with her mouth open, why does she do that.’
She continued: ‘Why is she always dressed that way? Why doesn’t she dress her age? I’m like, huh, if you had this body, you would be naked too!’
It’s a line that could have sounded defensive or arrogant, but lands with the breezy self-possession of someone who has stopped feeling the need to perform humility she doesn’t really feel.
In fact, many of her recent on-stage remarks evoke the fiery, in-your-face J-Lo that first launched her to stardom: sharp, funny, unfiltered, fully aware of just how sexy and powerful she is.
Even more strikingly? She’s visibly enjoying performing, looking more at home on stage than she has in years.
Her January Instagram caption says it plainly: ‘Nothing like ringing in 2026 with my coconuts on stage and being surrounded by the people that I love. The best is yet to come.’
It’s tempting to call this a comeback, but what’s happening feels more like the dropping of a mask.
In the early 2000s, J-Lo was sharp, occasionally messy, and gloriously unfiltered. She wore the wildest dress on the red carpet and said exactly what she thought, until, somewhere along the way, celebrity changed that.
Now, after public disappointment and a lot of heartbreak, she seems to be finally finding her way back.
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