How Jennifer Lopez And Marc Anthony First Bonded On ‘No Me Ames’ Years Ago

Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony released their first duet “No Me Ames” 20 years ago. The track propelled the actress’ music career into greater heights, and it also led to a beautiful relationship with Anthony.

During an interview with Billboard, Lopez detailed how their duet on “No Me Ames” came about. The track was released on June 26, 1999. At that time, Lopez and Anthony first met each other at the Sony Music offices in New York City.

Anthony was working with songwriter and producer Corey Rooney at that time. The latter also became Lopez’s writing partner, so it was Rooney that linked the two artists up and said that they should do a record together.

Lopez’s ex-husband agreed to meet with her and Rooney at the studio. At that time, the “Medicine” singer was already a huge fan of Anthony. During their conversation, Lopez also told Anthony that she would do a song in Spanish because she loves his music.

“It took less than 10 minutes after Anthony had left the studio to find the song,” she said. “He called and said, ‘I have the song for us. It’s an Italian song called ‘Non Amarmi’ — and we can translate it into Spanish, do it as a ballad and do it as a salsa record,” Lopez added.

Dan Shea, the producer of “No Me Ames,” talked about Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s connection. He said that there was definitely a strong creative connection between the two artists.

“When Jennifer was singing her part, Marc would stand next to her,” he said. “He would throw ideas. Because it was in Spanish, there was an immediate personal bond that came into play. I mean, this was a love song,” he added.

Shea also said that recording the song was very easy. Within 20 minutes, Anthony was done recording his part. With Jennifer Lopez, things were quite easy as well. But Shea revealed that they went back and forth with her more difficult lines.

Five years after the release of “No Me Ames,” Lopez and Anthony decided to tie the knot. They were blessed with twins, Max and Emme, but divorced in 2012.