This is not her now: Jennifer Lopez cancels summer tour

Jennifer Lopez has canceled her summer tour. Originally titled “This Is Me… Now,” the tour was meant to support the recently released album of the same name. She later changed the tour title to “This Is Me… Live | The Greatest Hits” amid poor ticket sales. Now the tour, scheduled to run from June to August, has been called off altogether, still amid poor ticket sales but also amid persistent rumors about issues in the star’s personal life. The latter seems to be the reason for the tour cancelation—or at least the reason Lopez wants us to believe she canceled the tour—as LiveNation said in a statement that “Jennifer is taking time off to be with her children, family and close friends.”

“I am completely heartsick and devastated about letting you down. Please know that I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t feel that it was absolutely necessary,” Lopez herself wrote in a statement on her website. “I promise I will make it up to you and we will all be together again. I love you all so much. Until next time…”.

Over the last several weeks, speculation that Lopez’s marriage with Ben Affleck is on the rocks has been all over the Internet. This Is Me…Now and its accompanying films were all about her finding her way back to Affleck, which both parties have deemed The Greatest Love Story Never Told. That’s literally the title of the documentary she made about making the album and its accompanying film, about which Affleck expressed some discomfort. (“I did really find the beauty and the poetry and the irony in the fact that it’s the greatest love story never told,” he says in the documentary. “And if you’re making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it.”) Affleck’s well documented skepticism about his wife’s public persona and Lopez’s recent solo appearances fueled the rumors that they were heading towards a split, culminating in the singer shutting down a journalist asking about her relationship at an Atlas press conference. Though the pair have since been spotted out and about together, even that couldn’t put the kibosh on the break-up gossip. (A TMZ headline from today reads: “Ben Affleck & Jennifer Lopez Hold Hands in Public Again, But Look Tense”.)

However, we’ll note again that Lopez’s tour was really not selling well. In fairness, nobody’s tour seems to be selling well these days. But Lopez tried to rebrand the experience into a “greatest hits” concert to drum up more interest, and she still ended up canceling multiple dates last month. According to Variety, sources in the Lopez camp insist that the poor ticket sales are not the reason for the whole tour getting scrapped. But the outlet points out that many of the remaining dates were pretty undersold as well, so it really seems like Lopez is using her tumultuous personal life as an excuse to get out of performing at half-full stadiums. Could it be that all of the rocky relationship rumors were fabricated in the first place, just to provide cover for the tour flopping? It’s a conspiracy, sure, but we can’t put anything past a professional stunt queen like Jennifer Lopez.

Regardless of the real reasons behind it, Lopez will surely come out on top, like she always does. The This Is Me…Now movie and The Greatest Love Story Never Told were actually quite warmly received, and her new Netflix movie Atlas was apparently much more widely viewed than anything in theaters Memorial Day weekend. The tour cancellation puts the spotlight back on her and her greatest love story, and as they say, no press is bad press. Never doubt J.Lo’s ability to hustle her way out of any situation!