Ricky Martin Born: Latin Pop's Crossover Pioneer

Ricky Martin launched his career as a twelve-year-old member of Menudo, the Puerto Rican boy band that dominated Latin American pop music in the 1980s. He spent five years with the group, performing across Latin America, before leaving at seventeen and pursuing acting and a solo career. Born Enrique Martin Morales in San Juan, Puerto Rico on December 24, 1971, he grew up in a middle-class household. His father was a psychologist, his mother an accountant. He auditioned for Menudo three times before being accepted. The group, which replaced members as they aged out, gave him training in performance, media, and the demands of a professional entertainment career at an age when most children are in middle school. After Menudo, he appeared in the Mexican telenovela Alcanzar una Estrella and on the American television series General Hospital before releasing his first solo album in 1991 in Spanish. He spent most of the 1990s building a following in Latin America and Spain, releasing four Spanish-language albums. His explosive performance of "La Copa de la Vida" at the 1999 Grammy Awards is widely credited as the moment that launched the Latin pop crossover into mainstream American music. He performed the song, originally the anthem for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, with a physical energy that brought the audience to its feet. His self-titled English-language album, released shortly after, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold 22 million copies worldwide. "Livin' La Vida Loca" became a global phenomenon. Alongside contemporaries Shakira, Marc Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, and Enrique Iglesias, Martin fueled a Latin music boom that reshaped the Billboard charts and forced the American recording industry to reckon with the commercial power of Spanish-language and bilingual artists. He came out publicly as gay in 2010, after years of press speculation. He later married Jwan Yosef in 2017 and has four children. He has sold over 70 million records worldwide.