Is he still “livin la vida loca”? Or is he in celebrity hell (nobody remebers him)? I was in Brazil last month, and I saw him in an ad for an upscale Brazilian department store. is this what he is reduced to? Is he doome dto be the next erik Estrada?
Well, after he had that quart of semen pumped from his stomach(Britney Spears still holds the record at 2.4 quarts), his career took a nose dive.
Even at the height of his career, Ricky Martin had “future C-lister” written all over him.
I know that he alienated a lot of his primary fan bases when he entertained at George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration (his primary fan bases being working-class latinos & gay men). Not uncoincidentally, his slide down into the C-list began in ernest right after that event.
(a) It’s only in the US and some parts of Europe that “stars” consider it beneath them to do ads for mundane consumer goods. Not a reliable indicator of downturn.
(b) Art, methinks you overestimate Ricky’s base. My experience is the bulk of them are people who, if you ask them who’s the President, you’ll be lucky to get “Martin Sheen”.
However…
© He hasn’t put out anything new in years. Not even in the Spanish market. The excuse for that is…
(d) He’s doing a Bob Geldof, going all over the world with a Foundation fighting child exploitation. Has spent a lot of time in SE Asia on that beat. But while all that may be noble and praiseworthy,
(e) It’s also observed that it’s been just as long since he’s done any work with Robby Draco Rosa, the real creator of “The Cup of Life” and “La Vida Loca”. So while that drought goes on…
(f) The “working class latinos” already had begun back in '00 switching allegiances to Mark Anthony, whom they can at least sort of identify with – rough-around-edges non-prettyboy who yet serial-marries hot celeb babes. And who can actually sing.
Ricky just got made too big too fast and could not sustain.
JRD, you haven’t heard the ratio lately, have you?
Almas del silencio (2003). Check in Amazon, it was released in 2003. This means a couple of years ago… not much different from other artists who take a few years from CD to CD and release as many singles as they can. And yes, they do get radio airplay, as I was able to check during my stays in Puerto Rico between classes.
I agree that his best work was with Robi Rosa. And I also think he should never had done the crossover to English, he sounds so much better in Spanish, plus Spanish pop is much better than English pop. 
That or he has better writers when he sings Spanish.
He may not have collaborated so much with Robi lately because Robi himself has been busy working on his own album (which won something or other in the Latin Grammys, right?).
No, I certainly haven’t. First time I even read about it (but then again I don’t read the entertainment section of the newspaper, either).
OTOH, I could not miss today’s Vocero in San Juan where they did 18 &^%$# pages on how he’s saving the world, how he’s big in Brazil, how spiritually attuned he is, how he’s finally coming up with a new US-market release, and how cute his alibi, er, alleged female companion, is. (Yeah, right, Ricky, whatever)
I have this feeling that long after Ricky has become a Hollywood Square, Draco will be still getting awards.
On the sole evidence of “Shake Your Bom-Bom” I say it’s the latter. Normally Spanish pop is no more or less fecally impacted than English pop (which explains why my radio is tuned to news-talk), but that was appalling. But maybe that’s just my own ever-accelerating musical oldfartitude speaking… Indeed some “Latin Boom” stars suffered when attempting the crossover, because you could tell it was not natural. Ricky, as designated-poster-boy for the “Latin-Boom”, caught it specially hard.
Yes.
My favorite comment by Ricky Martin was when asked what he felt about “the explosion of Latin performers”: “What explosion? There are about five of us.” (He was right- there were fewer big-selling Latin artists at the time than there are members of Menudo at any given time… and two of them were former Menudo members.)
My favorite comments about Ricky are from the Betty Bowers group Baptists Actively Saving Homosexuals (BASH). Yes, the Betty Bowers site is a joke site.
JRD, no wonder… when do you expect to hear music at the news radios?!? I know some of our hosts like to put songs between segments, but they would hardly pick up any Ricky Martin (or pop, for that matter) song for that part.
Precisely. It keeps my brain from recording further atrocities in the league of “She Bangs”.