Everything Jennifer Lopez Has Said About Ben Affleck Inspiring Her Music

To celebrate her new film 'This Is Me...Now: A Love Story,' see what Lopez has said about how her husband impacts her art

Though Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez tied the knot less than two years ago, the couple’s love story dates back decades before their gorgeous Georgia wedding in August 2022.

With a history as long as theirs, it's no surprise that bits of their story have come out in Lopez’s music over the years, starting with her 2002 album This Is Me…Then. While songs like "I'm Glad" and "Dear Ben" are obviously about her beau, the "Get Right" singer has also revealed that the entire body of work was actually inspired by Affleck.

More than twenty years later, Lopez's follow-up film and album, This Is Me...Now: A Love Story, focuses on her lived experience at the intersection of hope and romance.

To celebrate the movie's Feb. 16 premiere on Prime Video, look back at the many ways J.Lo has let her love for the Oscar winner inspire her hits.

Ample Inspiration

At an L.A. screening of Lopez's self-funded production This Is Me...Now, the pop icon was overcome with emotion as she thanked Affleck for supporting her and her art.

"There is the person who inspired this for me, who has inspired me my whole life. He just, he inspired an album 20 years ago and I know he hates that I'm doing this right now," Lopez gushed.

'Thank You for Believing in Me'

"He's just like, 'Please shut up.’ No! And I say no. I say, I love you and thank you for believing in me and helping me believe in myself," she continued at the screening, which took place a few days before the official premiere. "And helping me to grow every single day. Thank you for the family that we've created and our children and everything that you do for me."

Sharing a Life Together

Lopez's heartfelt speech concluded, "You will never know what it is to be able to share this lifetime and have you be my love. Thank you."

The Urge to Create

The multi-hyphenate talent told Entertainment Tonight that she was quick to record more music after she and the actor reunited.

"When Ben and I got back together, it was just like, 'I want to make music again, I want to get back in the studio,'" Lopez told the outlet in February 2024. "I was very, very inspired."

Source of Support

At a pre-premiere press conference with director Dave Meyers, Lopez also revealed that her filmmaker husband helped quash any self-doubt while creating This Is Me...Now.

“I was like, ‘I don’t write, I don’t do this.’ He was like, ‘You do, you write, you direct, you produce, you choreograph, you do all the things. Start stepping into that, start owning a little bit of who you are,’” she recalled Affleck telling her.

Healing from Heartbreak

Meyers also attested to Affleck's influence on the visual project during the press conference. The director recalled how Lopez told him up about "the pain that she went through when she broke up with Ben the first time."

The singer's vulnerable discussion with Meyers specifically inspired a scene from their project in which Lopez plays a construction worker at a heart factory.

"There was a lot of honesty that was shared in that first meeting, and so the heart factory became sort of a Titanic-level meltdown, which was a metaphor for what she was giving me as far as her truth," Meyers said.

Turning a New Page

Over a year before the movie's release, Lopez shared the context surrounding This Is Me...Then in a November 2022 interview with Apple Music 1's Zane Lowe: "We captured me at this moment in time when I was reunited with the love of my life and we decided we were going to be together forever,” she said.

Lopez continued, “The whole message of [This Is Me...Then] is, 'This love exists. This is a real love.' Now I think what the message of [This Is Me...Now] is: If you have, like me at times, lost hope, almost given up, don't. True love does exist and some things do last forever and that's real."

Precious Moments

Earlier in her discussion with Lowe, the singer also discussed her process of creating the 2002 record and Affleck’s involvement in it all. The Good Will Hunting actor, who was featured in Lopez’s music video for “Jenny from the Block,” even helped her come up with the title of the record. 

"It’s all right there on the record and I didn’t even realize what was happening, what I was doing. It was just every day, going from the set to the recording studio, doing the thing, being in love, him coming into the studio," she recalled during the November 2022 discussion. "It was such a special moment in time to have captured."

Looking Back

During her Apple Music interview, Lopez admitted that as much as she raved about their love, she inadvertently spoke about their breakup and the trying years that would follow.

“It’s all there, when I listen to the lyrics now I didn’t even realize I was writing some of our story that would happen, which was sick. Like 'Still' and some of the records on there which were more obviously about Ben, but even records that you were like ‘Well, that’s kind of a breakup record’ I didn’t even realize that it was kind of prophetic in a weird way.”

Dark Before Dawn

After initially getting engaged in 2002, the pair postponed their 2003 wedding just days before they were set to walk down the aisle “due to the excessive media attention” that their nuptials had gained. In 2004, the couple officially called it quits.

"Dude, I wouldn't even perform these records. It was so painful after we broke up,” Lopez told Lowe of their split. “Once we called off that wedding 20 years ago, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life. I honestly felt like I was going to die. It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn't get it right. But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending. It has the most would-never-happen-in-Hollywood ending."

High Praise

During an appearance on an episode of the Smartless podcast hosted by Sean Hayes, Jason Bateman and Will Arnet, Affleck was asked how he feels about the subject, to which he responded: "The songs that have been written about me have been written by the greatest performer in the history of the world, Jennifer Lopez. I don’t know that they’re exactly so much about me, as maybe inspired by, because there are some negative things in there," he joked. "She’s amazing."

More to Say and Sing

In tandem with her film premiere, J.Lo is also releasing an accompanying album of the same name. The track list includes a new collection of songs inspired by their love story.

"Dear Ben pt. II" continues an ode to Affleck she started on her 2002 record This Is Me... Then. Another new song, "Midnight Trip to Vegas", nods to the couple's first marriage ceremony in July 2022.

All Together Now

Lopez teased another new track in her JLo newsletter named “Hummingbird,” which was also the theme for her 2022 holiday season decor. She noted that it represented her and Affleck’s “blended families” which “doubled the fun, doubled the love, doubled the presents and triple the chaos!!"

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