Ricky Martin says he's happy at last

By Jordan Levin McClatchy Newspapers

MIAMI — Like the autobiography and the album, other big projects he has completed since he came out a year ago, Ricky Martin's new concert production is designed to show off who he is. The show opens with Martin's bubbly early hits, moves on to the "Vida Loca" madness of his turn-of-the-century crossover, then into a quiet section of introspective retreat and, finally, on to celebratory Latin pop. Much of the music is familiar. And so is the star onstage.

"What I'm trying to say is everything changed, but everything is still the same," Martin says from his home in Puerto Rico, shortly after kicking off his "MAS" tour with four sold-out concerts at San Juan's Puerto Rican Coliseum in late March. "I'm the same entertainer, the same performer, but my emotions are coming from a really different place."

The man who grew up in pop music, touring the world since he joined boy group Menudo at 12, has never held back onstage. But Martin, 39, says he feels a whole new sense of liberation now that he's not hiding his true nature.

"I always said that being onstage is the only place I know where I'm at," he says. "Now it's like once again breaking walls. ... I'm loving it. I'm feeling all these new things and learning to play with all these amazing emotions."

The once-guarded singer sounds ebullient, relaxed and earnest about sharing his feelings, the same way he came across in his 2010 autobiography, "Me," and in numerous interviews and appearances. Martin says that sense of happy expressiveness inspired the album "Musica+Alma+Sexo" (for "Music+Soul+Sex," or "MAS," "more" in Spanish), created with his "Vida Loca"-era producer, songwriter and collaborator Desmond Child. The two reunited in a months-long music-making session-slash-family camp at a house Martin owns in Golden Beach, Fla., in the summer of 2010.

Child moved in with his partner and their 8-year-old twin boys, who played with Martin's toddler twin sons, Valentino and Matteo. Songwriting and studio work were interspersed with late-afternoon dips in the ocean and family dinners.

"We were the Pa and Pa operation," Child jokes from a family drive through the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, near their house in Nashville. But Martin was also doing some serious thinking, starting his autobiography and considering when and how to come out. Many of the songs on "MAS" mirror sections of the book, says Child, dealing with self-realization and personal liberation. "Frio" (Cold) is about not being able to love a woman enough, while on "No Te Miento" (I'm Not Lying to You) Martin says, "I'm not lying. ... (I)f you look in my eyes, you'll see I have nothing to hide." In "Basta Ya" (Enough Already) he proclaims "Enough already/of condemning the voice/that I carry inside/and pretending to be sincere."

"Every aspect of his life is represented," Child says. In the five years between "MAS" and Martin's previous studio album, "Life," the singer had his children with a surrogate mother, went on a spiritual pilgrimage to India and became increasingly immersed in charity work, starting a foundation to help child victims of sex abuse and trafficking.

"It's about sharing with the world where I've been, what I've done, where I'm at today," Martin says of "MAS." "What we created could be for anyone who's being persecuted because of sexual orientation, because of religion. ...It could be about me; it could be about you. We all have secrets we carry within us. It's about freedom, about finding dignity."

Child saw an enormous difference from the Martin with whom he had worked back in the late '90s, the star who sparked a global pop phenomenon.

"He really needed time off to experience and reflect on everything that had been happening to him," Child says. "From the moment he came out ... it was like a weight came off his shoulders, and he could shine."

Child says that just before Martin announced himself to the world via Twitter, he was singing "No Te Miento" over and over. "And he looked at me and said, 'How should I come out?'" Child says. "He said to me then that, because of his children, he could not live in the shadows anymore. He didn't want his children to know him as a liar."

Martin laughs at the story. "He told me a thousand different ways (to do it), but he didn't tell me Twitter."

How Martin will mesh his new life and identity with his career as a pop star is still a work in progress. "MAS" debuted at the top of Billboard Magazine's Latin Album sales chart but in the eight weeks since has dropped to No. 7. The singer's gayness, long rumored, has inspired mostly positive response, but no one can predict whether audiences will keep buying albums and tickets the way they did a decade ago. While the world has become far more accepting of gay stars, from Elton John to "Glee's" Kurt (actor Chris Colfer), tolerance for a gay romantic idol among Hispanics, who make up much of Martin's audience, could be more elusive.

"It's harder for someone who's more of a leading man" as opposed, says Child, to self-parodying figures such as Juan Gabriel or Richard Simmons. "Because it's like, 'Oh, he's not half a woman. He's a real man.' And that's more threatening. Especially in Latin culture. Gay humor, gay culture is pervasive in Latin culture but always with a giggle, a mocking aspect."

But Martin seems more concerned about how to combine fatherhood and career, about forging a career that fits his changed life. Matteo and Valentino, 2, are on tour with him (with Martin's mother along to help out), and after shows Martin plans to eat with them and put them to bed. In 2012 he'll star as Che in a Broadway revival of "Evita," and he's looking forward to having a stable job while his kids start school. Recently he bemoaned to his mother about the guilt he felt when leaving the boys for a short trip.

"And she said, 'Learn to live with it, 'cause you will always feel guilty.' But she also said, 'You can't feel guilty because you love your career.'

"Having kids doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing music or stop performing. People say, 'Ricky, your kids need stability.' I am their stability. As long as I'm with them everything is fine. What is quote unquote normal?

"This is our reality, and we have to embrace it."

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© 2011, The Miami Herald.