Ricky Martin: ‘I Am a Man with No Secrets’

Ricky Martin is busy. At home, he’s a husband, married to the Syrian-Swedish artist Jwan Yosef since 2017. He’s a dad, with four kids under the age of 13. He has a new album coming out soon — “Play,” his eleventh — after 70 million records sold (the first single drops June 10). Now 49, he promises the new album is filled with up-tempo, danceable songs, and let’s be honest, don’t we all need to dance to Ricky Martin right now? “Especially during Pride!” Martin agrees. In the Fall, he’ll tour with Enrique Iglesias – and he says no slow songs there either.

Now, the cover star of People Magazine’s second annual Pride issue, the King of Latin Pop — back with a new album — says he’s “more comfortable in his own skin than ever before.”

It’s been over two decades since Ricky Martin arrived on the American pop culture scene, Venus in leather pants on a clamshell. An approachable raconteur, he shook up the American pop establishment at the 1999 Grammy Awards with a thrust of his hips, a wave of his hands, and the invincible chorus of “Livin’ La Vida Loca” pulsing at 180 beats per minute. Women wanted him. Men wanted him. Madonna wanted him. (They even recorded a duet.)

“But I’m really insecure, to be honest,” Martin admits, getting comfortable in his chair in a Los Angeles hotel suite last month. He fiddles nervously with the hem of his silk shirt. “I’m super socially awkward, but today, well the difference is that I know I’m socially awkward. So, I don’t go anywhere that causes me anxiety. I’m at peace with performing in front of 30,000 people and feel like the king of the world. But then I walk into a small room at an intimate gathering, and someone will say, ‘Hey Rick, sing a song for us!’ and that creates such anxiety.”