Given her promotion to the
Paula Abdul seat on American Idol, there’s a distinct irony in having the first sounds on
Jennifer Lopez’s
Love? all twisted through a vocoder: she may be judging the pop purity of legions of hopeful singers, but even she can’t resist the siren call of the computer. Of course,
Lopez was never, ever about singing; she was about style, particularly the kind that passes for fashionable at glitzy high-rise discos. Instead of being a return to the high-glitz pizzazz of “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,”
Love? is pop in form only, emphasizing rhythms and textures over hooks. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine