WATCH Jennifer Lopez – “On the Floor” feat. Appearing on television weekly in front of audiences of over 20 million meant that her album Love? was gifted with a major promotional platform. The exposure on American Idol paid off handsomely for Lopez because her single “On the Floor” reached the top ten, peaking at number three, and became her biggest hit in nearly a decade.
She joined the 10 th season of the singing competition for a reported $12 million. That year, she found a new way to market her brand: judging on American Idol. But, even if the commercial fortunes of her work dipped, her celebrity remained untouched. The songs stopped charting and her film career entered a period of some disappointing-to-middling successes. She broke into the music industry with her 1999 album, On the 6, and enjoyed a string of hit singles, but by 2011, she was so overexposed-with a brand so diverse and ubiquitous-that the impact of her music seemed diluted and irrelevant. Thus, even though Jennifer Lopez is a performer, her fame has taken on a Kardashian-like quality, and she’s largely famous for just being famous.īy 2011, Lopez’s music career entered a plateau of sorts. Not everyone will know the lyrics to her latest song, nor will everyone be able to recount the plot to her last film, but nearly everyone can recite the list of paramours Lopez had throughout her (very) public life. So, one could say that Jennifer Lopez was our generation’s Elizabeth Taylor. The movies, the music, the perfume, the tabloid stories-they’re all mere shiny accessories to Lopez’s staggering fame. Though Lopez is a hard-working actress, singer, dancer, producer, and entrepreneur, she’s also a Celebrity with a capital C. Like Taylor, Lopez is a Hollywood performer who has branched out into other endeavors and projects and someone whose personal life often overwhelmed her work. Of course, the comparison between Lopez and Taylor is very apt. The joke was similar to all of those wisecracks in the 1980s about Elizabeth Taylor’s habit of getting married.
When the show’s boozy libertine Karen Walker (Megan Mullally) described her brief marriage from the previous season as lasting 20 minutes, Jennifer Lopez responded with a deadpan, “And that’s short, right?” The joke was a crack on Lopez’s reputation for having many short-lived engagements, relationships, and marriages. In the seventh season premiere of Will & Grace, Jennifer Lopez made a cameo as herself.