{"id":23621,"date":"2014-06-09T17:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=23621"},"modified":"2014-06-09T15:01:16","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T15:01:16","slug":"j-lopez-pulls-out-of-world-cup-opening-ceremony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=23621","title":{"rendered":"J Lopez pulls out of World Cup opening ceremony"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"story_continues_1\">Jennifer Lopez has pulled out of performing the official World Cup song at the tournament&#8217;s opening ceremony in Brazil, Fifa has announced.<\/p>\n<p>Officials said the singer could not attend Thursday&#8217;s show because of unspecified &#8220;production issues&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Lopez was due to perform alongside rapper Pitbull and Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte, with whom she has recorded the song\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TGtWWb9emYI\">We Are One (Ole Ola)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Pitball and Leitte will go ahead and perform accompanied by drummers Olodum.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For production issues, Jennifer Lopez, one of the artists of the official song We Are One, will not be able to perform at the Fifa World Cup opening ceremony,&#8221; said a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The 25-minute ceremony in Sao Paulo will feature 600 artists, including acrobatic gymnasts, trampolinists, martial arts-style performers and stilt walkers.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Lopez &#8211; whose hits include On The Floor and Jenny From The Block &#8211; said she was &#8220;thrilled&#8221; to be given the chance to perform at the opening ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is an amazing celebration of global unity, competition and sport,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Pitbull appeared not to be downhearted at Lopez&#8217;s withdrawal from the show.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To be performing We Are One to the world, especially in such a beautiful country like Brazil, is going to be a lot of fun,&#8221; he said in a statement released by Fifa.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But more than this, it is going to show the world that music is the universal language.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lopez also missed the January event where Pitbull and Leitte unveiled plans for the song alongside Fifa officials in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n<p>More than 60,000 people are expected to be in Sao Paulo&#8217;s Corinthians Arena to watch the ceremony and kick-off match between Brazil and Croatia.<\/p>\n<p>Up to a billion people are expected to tune in on TV worldwide<\/p>\n<p>Lopez&#8217;s cancellation comes amid protests and strikes in Brazil, where some are unhappy about the amount of money being spent on the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The action has been on a smaller scale to the mass protests last year, which delayed the building of stadiums and key infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n<p>However, a poll by the Pew Research Centre suggested that 61% of the public now felt hosting the World Cup had been a bad idea, as it diverted money from public services such as healthcare.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer Lopez has pulled out of performing the official World Cup song at the tournament&#8217;s opening ceremony in Brazil, Fifa has announced. Officials said the singer could not attend Thursday&#8217;s show because of unspecified &#8220;production issues&#8221;. Lopez was due to perform alongside rapper Pitbull and Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte, with whom she has recorded the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":23622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[35,6],"class_list":["post-23621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-lpg","tag-togbe-afede"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}