Ricky Martin tour dates and concert tickets were just announced — he’ll be touring Australia from 25 April to 8 May 2015.
Martin is currently the voice coach on the hit Aussie talent show “The Voice,” capping a pioneering Latin pop career. Martin brought the Latin genre to the world starting in the late 1990s with his English-language debut album “Ricky Martin,” which marked his breakout from an already successful Spanish-speaking career in Puerto Rico.
Ricky Martin started his career at the age of 12, singing with the all-boys group Menudo in Puerto Rico. Following five years performing with the group, he released a number of Spanish solo albums during the 1990s and worked as an actor both on stage and on Mexican TV. He starred in the US soap opera General Hospital in 1994, where he played a Puerto Rican singer.
His first major appearance was the 1999 performance “The Cup of Life” at the Grammy Awards, which helped bring Latin pop to the US music world. Following that, Martin’s English-language single “Livin’ La Vida Loca” brought him global success, including many Grammy awards. The single was followed by a world tour, which sold out across the UK, US, and Australia — in fact, according to many critics Livin’ La Vida Loca opened the door for many other Latin artists (like Shakira, J-Lo, and Enrique Iglesias) to cross the Spanish-English language barrier.
Livin’ La Videa Loca is generally credited as the song that began the 1999 Latin pop explosion. The single has sold over 8 million copies, making it one of the best-selling singles in history.
Martin has collaborated with some of the pop world’s biggest names — a duet in Spanish and English with Madonna and another with Janet Jackson. His second English-language album, Sound Loaded, sold over 8 million copies around the world and went double-platinum in Australia. The album’s hits included the song “She Bangs” and “Nobody Wants to Be Lonely,” a duet with Christina Aguilera.
In 2001 Martin released a compilation of his “Best-Of” English-language songs with remixes and edits, as well as a Spanish-language greatest-hits album called La Historia. Two years later Martin returned to music with the Spanish album Almas del Silencio, and an English-language album (“Life”) two years after that. Life has been called Martin’s most personal album, as he wrote or co-wrote many of the tracks.
Life debuted at the 12th position of the Billboard 200 and reached number one position on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums and stayed at the top for six weeks. The album was followed by the “One Night Only With Ricky Martin” tour, starting in Mexico City and touring across both North and South America. After a performance at the 2006 Winter Olympics closing ceremonies, the One Night Only tour visited Africa and Europe.
Ricky Martin fathered two twin boys, Matteo and Valentin, via a surrogate mother in 2008. He resurfaced in the music industry in 2010, when he started working on his autobiography (“Me”) and acknowledged that he was gay. Since then he’s become a figurehead of gay rights, openly campaigning for same-sex marriage.
Martin has sold more than 85 million albums worldwide. 95 of his albums have gone platinum, and six have reached Billboard #1 position. 11 of his songs have been Number 1 hits. He has also won two American Music awards, six Grammys, eight World Music awards, and more.
