80s hitmaker Martika reveals why she retired from pop music and why she’s making a comeback
REMEMBER Martika? The pop star behind hits Toy Soldiers, Love Thy Will Be Done and I Feel The Earth Move is hitting the comeback trail.
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MARTIKA was the pop star who voluntarily put herself in the Where Are They Now? file by raging against the machine.
By 1988 Martika (born Marta Marrero) turned being a child TV star in Kids Incorporated into a major musical career.
Her self-titled 1988 debut spawned the ballad Toy Soldiers, a No. 1 hit in the US and No. 5 in Australia as well as being a global Top 10 success.
A dance cover of Carole King’s I Feel the Earth Move made No. 2 in Australia in 1989, with More Than You Know, Cross My Heart and Water also hits from the album.
Martika’s second album saw her write with Prince, including Love Thy Will Be Done, a No. 1 in Australia in 1991 and the follow-up Martika’s Kitchen went Top 30.
But by 1992 Martika was done with showbusiness, after just four years as an international pop star.
“I just wanted to get out of the public eye,” Martika admits now.
“The music industry is extremely self indulgent and egocentric and narcissistic. If all you ever do is talk about yourself what kind of person do you become? The pressures of the music industry, of that life, I backed away from that. It’s much better for your sanity and the human side of one’s self.
“It can be a little bit overwhelming to try and make everyone happy. I didn’t really have a business perspective. Now, all these young acts know it’s a business, they know you’re a brand. And that’s what it is, you’re an artist but you’re really a product. But we’re human beings, we’re not a can of soup. It’s not like you’re on the shelf for sale, but yet you’re made to feel like that. All of that was confusing for a young mind. I’m just a person. So I took the scenic route of my life. I went ‘Hey, I think I wanna do my life away from that world’.”
There were signs of discontent between albums. Martika’s debut was released when she was just 18 and still living at home with her parents.
“That year I promoted my first album around the world, I was home maybe two weeks all year,” she says.
“I was young, I was very sheltered. Most 18-year-olds go off to college, I just went off to promote my music.”
When she returned home the pressure was automatically on to follow up her debut album, which had sold four million copies internationally. Martika had other plans.
“I just wanted to hang out with my friends and not have an itinerary,” she recalls. “So it took me a long time to make my second album. I just kept pretending I didn’t have a record contract with deadlines. And making that album took a while, parts of my career were disheartening.”
That album, 1991’s Martika’s Kitchen, wound up having four songs written and produced by Prince.
“I’d grown up watching his career,” Martika says of Prince.
“One of my co-stars on Kids Incorporated had a dad who worked in the music industry so he’d get advance copies of album. I got Michael Jackson’s Thriller way before it came out. And I got an advance copy of Prince’s 1999, then I listened back to his earlier albums, he was the soundtrack of my life.”
When they met, Prince asked if Martika had any song ideas — she handed over a journal including a prayer she’d written called Love Thy Will Be Done.
“It was very personal,” she says. “He gravitated towards that one. I was really excited because he’s explored sexuality and spirituality equally in his work. And then I’d get to go to Paisley Park where I’d walk around like an awe-struck child, sitting watching him rehearsing for a tour. So to collaborate with him on music was just a dream.”
But while it was a hit in the UK and Australia Martika’s Kitchen didn’t crack the US Top 100 and led to her walking away from her career.
There was dabbling in acting again, but Martika didn’t resurface until 2001 when she became one of the first artists to realise the power of the internet, launching martika.net to release music to her fans.
“The great thing is the immediacy,” she says of the internet.
“An artist can upload something and people can see it immediately. There’s so many creative things online you might not see in the mainstream.”
By 2003 she was in a Latin-tinged opera band with her husband, but her life would change dramatically in 2004 when Eminem sampled Toy Soldiers for his Like Toy Soldiers, a No. 1 hit in the UK and No. 4 in Australia.
“I meet kids who think it was so cool I got to sing on Eminem’s record,” Martika laughs. “I’m definitely the Toy Soldiers girl. My fanbase is called the Toy Soldiers Army. That song was the first impression of me for a lot of people and first impressions stay with you. I was just a kid who walked into a writing sessions with some ideas and sang them and now forever Martika will be known as the Toy Soldiers girl.”
Toy Soldiers was written about one of Martika’s friends who was dealing with a drug addiction, not the usual topic for a global pop hit.
“When I turned up to that session I heard the Toy Soldiers groove (co-writer) Michael Jay played me and I asked him, ‘What’s it about?’, and he said, ‘I dunno, that’s your problem!’. You have this moment of creativity that comes out so quickly, you don’t have time to stop and contemplate what it means and how it might affect the course of your life. It was just one song among many songs, fast forward and you see what impact it has. I was naive, I was trying to figure it all out. And that makes it easier to express yourself, as you get older you start to think about things a little bit too much.”
The song features her Kids Incorporated co-star Stacy ‘Fergie’ Ferguson as one of the children on the chorus — becoming her first No. 1 before her work with the Black Eyed Peas.
“Fergie was probably 13 or something, but she’s on there singing in the children’s choir,” Martika says.
“It’s so cool to grow up with someone and watch their career explode. Going to the store, seeing her on the cover of a magazine. I met her as an eight year old with this big powerful voice and a lot of attitude. It didn’t surprise me she made it.”
Toy Soldiers’ successful second wind via Eminem helped pay the bills during Martika’s downtime.
“My music catalogue has financed my adult life. It’s amazing you can even make a living in music at all.”
Prince has reclaimed Love Thy Will Be Done for his live shows (“he’s got such a large body of work, the fact he does that song in his concerts feels good”) and the song was recently covered by Delta Goodrem.
“She did a beautiful version,” Martika says. “It’s always so thrilling when someone covers your songs.”
Martika confused fans in 2010 by going under the name Vida Edit for a web-based series called J8ded that lasted four episodes.
“I was working as an actor on a project. The name ‘Martika’ clicks with the Toy Soldiers girl and that persona. Honestly I thought it was distracting from being able to immerse into this project.”
By 2012 she was back to being Martika, releasing a dance tracked called Flow With The Go. An Australian tour (her first, she’d only ever done a promotional visit Down Under) was announced and mysteriously cancelled.
“I was ready to go. I was going, then I wasn’t going. It wasn’t me, that’s all I can say.”
There is a “Chicago house-oriented dance record” in the works (“personal life messed with the schedule, it’s out in the cosmos unfinished at the moment”) and Martika dipped the retro circuit for the first time in 2014 playing with Rick Astley, Samantha Fox and Debbie Gibson in Chile at a one-off show.
Now, aged 46, she’ll embark on both her first tour of Australia and first package tour with the Totally 80s event in July, also featuring Berlin, Limahl, Wa Wa Nee, Stacey Q, Real Life and others.
“Touring is new for me,” Martika says. “I haven’t spent the last 25 years doing these songs. I didn’t continue my recording career after those first two albums. To wake it up after so long it’s a fresh experience for me.
“It’s probably similar to the audience, I have to revisit my youth as well, I have to bring the Martika that existed when I was 19, 20, 21 back. That was a long time ago, half a dozen lifetimes ago. But it’s not so bad for a girl to tap into that youthful vitality, right? I have to recreate that, it’s an interesting project for me to undertake right now.
“It’s an escape. There’s not a whole lot of pressure around it. You know anyone who’s come out just wants to see you, they want to hear those songs that mean something to them. They want to remember a time when they didn’t have a mortgage or kids or pressures in their grown up life. It’s a cool position to be in to take people into a little retro flashback. Music can take you back to a certain time and place, that’s a good feeling. All I’ve ever wanted to do is make people happy.”
Totally 80s tour: Eatons Hill Brisbane July 12, Jupiters Gold Coast July 14, Palais Theatre Melbourne July 15, Enmore Theatre Sydney July 16, Astor Theatre Perth July 20, The Gov Adelaide July 21, Wrest Point Hobart July 22.
On sale now, metropolistouring.com/totally80s
Originally published as 80s hitmaker Martika reveals why she retired from pop music and why she’s making a comeback
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