IN CONVERSATION WITH RICKY MARTIN

interview by JANA LETONJA

Ricky Martin is one of the best-selling Latin music artists of all time, having sold over 95 million records worldwide. Throughout his career, he has won over 200 awards (most awarded male Latin artist), including two Grammy Awards, five Latin Grammy Awards, five MTV Video Music Awards, two American Music Awards, three Latin American Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, nine Billboard Latin Music Awards, eight World Music Awards, fourteen Lo Nuestro Awards, and a Guinness World Record for his international hit song ‘María’. In the beginning of 2024, Ricky starred in Apple TV+’s comedy drama series ‘Palm Royale’, and is currently getting ready to spend the Summer performing on stages all over Spain.

Ricky, take us back to where it all began. What drew you into the world of music?

I think the world of music was an excuse for me to tell stories. I wanted to tell stories, but I didn’t know if it was through music. I was very young when I started. I was only 12 years old and I come from Puerto Rico. There was this boy band that was very famous all over Latin America and for me, the perfect diving board to be able to act or to sing, to be an entertainer, to be an artist, was with this band called Menudo. I auditioned four times and they said no four times because I was too young. Eventually, they said “You are still very young, but you really want this because you keep coming back for more auditions. So, you’re going to be part of this band”. 

Menudo was music, but more than anything I think it was like a theatrical concept. At the end of the day, they told me what to sing, how to dance, what to answer in interviews. It was like we had a script. And I guess for me, that was fantastic because they were guiding me, someone that had no experience in front of the cameras and no experience on stage. It was the best preparation, it was the best artistry education, I would say. I must add that in Puerto Rico, there is music everywhere, so the foundation of dance, the foundation of rhythms is something that I was born with. Puerto Rico is a little island in the Caribbean with very intense African influence and obviously because of the political situation, there is a lot of Anglo influence and European influence. So, I must give credit to all that.

Looking back at your rich career, in which you sold over 95 million records worldwide, how has your music evolved in all the years, and especially from an era to era of your career?

Because I have always been so influenced by so many cultures, I guess my music was never meant to be pure in any way, shape or form. I always liked mixing genres. It’s funny because I can go from pop to rock, with Jamaican influence or a Brazilian influence, to Caribbean, European sounds. It’s like a salad of sounds, to be honest. But I guess it’s the perfect mix that luckily people accept, so I guess we must be doing something good. I’ve surrounded myself with great producers and great composers and people that describe and translate my emotions very well. People that understand my madness when it tends to get creative, so people that understand my weaknesses and my fears, and my purities when it comes to creating. In that sense, I believe I’m the luckiest man. 

Being one of the best-selling Latin music artists of all time, have you ever dared to dream of such a career when you released your first song?

You always want everything. I don’t believe that there are artists that will settle for nothing but the world. I guess we are monsters of acceptance. We want to be accepted and that’s why we stand on stage and that’s why we feel that our heart is going to explode when we present music and we hear our music on the radio for the first time. It is because we want to impact our family, and then we want to impact our neighborhood, our city, our country, our region, our continent, and hopefully the world. 

Obviously, what worked for me is living in the moment, working passionately, saying yes to absolutely everything, and like I said, surrounding myself with great managers and great publicists and people that can help move this monster forward. At the end of the day, it’s about being stubborn and not having a set time of when you want to conquer specific continents, but always imagine in your mind about what is it exactly that you want, fantasize over it and dream about it, draw it and paint about it. That’s manifested. That’s what worked for me and I still work on that, to be honest.

Throughout all the years in the industry, you won over 200 awards, from Grammy awards to Billboard awards, but which out of them all meant personally the most to you and you consider as the biggest reward of your career?

The first Grammy for me was like graduating from a doctor’s degree in arts because it’s the industry recognizing you and telling you that you did a great job. What happened right after that performance and right after Grammy celebration was very significant. It’s like a before and after. 

And then, things were never the same. Obviously, I was recognized around the world, that album was number one in I don’t know how many countries, and non-Spanish speaking countries were accepting my music. 

That performance at that celebration of the Grammys opened up a very important market, which is North America. At the end of the day, it’s important to be part of mainstream America, something that was very difficult to Latin artists. And with that wave, Enrique Iglesias, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, we’re all joining forces and we’re all coming together. It was a very special moment for music and for my culture in general. In my case, I usually work market by market. I went to France, I went to the UK, I went to the Netherlands, I went to Australia, I went to Asia. Having a song that was the anthem of the World Cup also helped me to open those doors, so by the time they knew me in America, the whole world knew who Ricky Martin was. 

The song that massively contributed to your international recognition was ‘María’, for which you also won the Guinness Record as the biggest Latin hit. What did this song mean for your career when it was released, and how do you see it today?

It is the one song that if I walk on stage today and don’t perform it, people will throw tomatoes at me. It was the song that changed everything because I was pretty much a crooner when ‘María’ was born in the studio. And I remember this record label executive that told me my career is over when he heard ‘María’ for the first time. I was doing lots of ballads and all of a sudden I have a little bit more chloric kind of sound with more Latin slash flaming influence. He said “No, this is not you, you’re taking a risk and this could be the end of your career”. And the song became the song that brought me to Europe. 

For a Latin artist to come to Europe, the logical thing would be to first start in Spain and then from Spain, you start little by little branching out to the rest of the continent. I was the first Latin artist to get into the charts with a song in Spain. After that, I went to Finland and did a very big concert there. Then I moved to Paris because I wanted the song to be successful in Paris and we worked the market from zero. We did the same thing with Italy and then obviously we went to Belgium and Netherlands, and after that to Asia. I remember we did a concert in New Delhi for 55.000 people when I only had that song as a single. So it was a very powerful song, a very simple theme, a rhythm that was very catchy and seduced the people. I guess we did something right.

You’re being described as the pioneer in getting Latin pop music to mainstream recognition, having artists like Enrique Iglesias, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira amongst others followed in your footsteps. With you being an inspiration to them, who or what has always been the biggest inspiration to you?

I always have to give credit to those that were here before me. I have to talk about Celia Cruz. I have to talk about Gloria Estefan. She was a force that created the Miami Sound Machine and brought Latin sounds also to the global mainstream charts. Obviously, also Jose Feliciano who was playing his guitar in Woodstock, and Carlos Santana was playing guitar with Jose Feliciano in Woodstock. These are legends that opened up a lot of paths for my generation and for the world to be a little bit more familiarized with my musical culture.

But, I knew exactly what was going on in rock. I loved Led Zeppelin and Bon Jovi. They influenced me a lot. They always said that they were rock,  but they are very pop at the same time. And to be able to say that the man that was working with all these bands, Desmond Child, later on came into my life and we worked on a track like ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ is something that is worth mentioning because it’s very evident that I was also very influenced by all these sounds.

Earlier this year, we’ve also gotten to watch you in Apple TV+’s series ‘Palm Royale’. How would you sum up this experience, and what did you enjoy the most about it? Can we also expect to see you second season, when it returns to our screens?

Remember what I told you in the beginning of our conversation about telling stories?  I wanted to tell stories, so I think acting also came with the necessity to tell stories. When I have a song, I look at the lyrics and I’m telling a story. The same thing happens in acting. I have a script and I’m also telling a story. The first time I heard the word action as an actor, I was 14 years old. And then I did another very big project when I was 15 years old. And then later on in life, when I was 19 years old, I said I love acting. I love what I feel when I’m on stage and I also love what I feel when I hear the word action. When music came and did its thing, it didn’t allow me to do anything else then just focus on music. 

I love what I’m doing in ‘Palm Royale’. I love the story. I love how, even though it’s comedy, thought provoking it could be. The cliffhanger in the first season’s finale is so powerful. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. I can’t say much more.

This year is marking 20 years since you founded your non-profit organization, The Ricky Martin Foundation, focusing on denouncing human trafficking and educating about crime’s existence. What was the driving force behind setting up the Foundation, and what actions do you work on throughout the year with it?

On one trip to India, where I had the opportunity to volunteer for an orphanage, I had the opportunity to work with girls that were rescued from the streets and girls that were very close to being trafficked. I remember landing in Calcutta one day and the owner of this orphanage telling me “Let’s go to the hotel, drop your luggage and let’s go immediately to the streets to start rescuing girls”. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I saw how a little girl was being picked up by a trafficker and we stopped it. When I came back home I was horrified by what happens in all these countries. I was ignorant before that and then I started learning it happens everywhere. It happens in undeveloped countries and it happens in super powerful countries. I learned that New York City is one of the biggest cities supporting human trafficking. It’s not about being rich or poor, it’s organized crime and the tentacles are everywhere. 

I started working on education for at least three or four years of my life with my foundation. It was all about creating awareness. And I did a lot of PSAs. I traveled around the world, met with local organizations that were teaching me about their work because eventually I wanted to do that in my region. I wanted to do that in Puerto Rico, so I built a center in Puerto Rico where we have kids from different neighborhoods that are impacted or could be impacted by human trafficking. And I’m very happy to say that all the kids that are going to my center are not affected by human trafficking because we’ve educated them of how evil this could be. We’re letting them know there are options. You are a child, you need to study, you need to be a child, you don’t need to work, you don’t need to do anything. We will support you. We will help you and we will help your parents to inspire you to go out and study because that’s what’s most important. 

And it’s very difficult because it’s one of those things where you save one person from human trafficking and 10 people go into human trafficking. It’s exhausting to be honest, so sometimes you just have to step back, take a deep breath and then go back with full force. If I stop everything that I’ve done right now, I am very happy with what we’ve accomplished. I am at so much peace right now if I just say that I want to focus on my children, see them grow and I retire. I know part of my legacy is that decade or a little bit more than a decade that I did fighting human trafficking.

Tell us more about your upcoming projects and plans, especially for the Summer.

I cannot wait to go to Spain. I am going to be in Spain for an entire month. A very busy tour. I don’t think I even have days off. After Spain, we’re going to Turkey for another concert. And then I come back and I will lock myself in the studio to record more music. I will be releasing a single within the next couple of weeks that I hope you enjoy. It is not energetic, it’s mid tempo, but also very sweet and sexy. I love it. And I’m closing some really powerful acting projects that are going to be of impact. There’s going to be a lot of acting next year.

TEAM CREDITS:
talent RICKY MARTIN
photographer FERNANDO SIPPEL
stylist DOUGLAS VAN LANINGHAM at The Rex Agency
makeup HANIC ARIAS
hair SHAUL
production WE MADE IT
executive producer JORGE A. ROSELL
photography assistants FRANCISCO ESCOBAR & ZACHARY SERRANO
pr RÓNDINE ALCALÁ
retoucher MARIO ERNUN
editor TIMI LETONJA
interview JANA LETONJA
cover design ARTHUR ROELOFFZEN