Martika is back but not because she has to. It is because she wants to.
Martika
Martika was only 22 when she “retired” from the music business and by that time she had already been doing it for 10 years. She says he made a lot of money and just wanted a break. That ended up being a 20-year break.
“I spent several years just being a professional slacker,” Martika tells Noise11.com. “I guess I had a delayed childhood. It wasn’t meant to be too long but a month turned into two years and then I just stopped wanting the pressure. I didn’t want to have the next year of my life mapped out ahead of time”.
She understands a lot of people crave to be stars but it didn’t work for her. “The jet-set lifestyle of what we do is quite a pace and it didn’t really feel right,” she said. “I don’t even know how all these stars can do it year in year after year after year but hats off to them. I just wanted to chill”.
Well before her 1988 hit ‘Toy Soldiers’ made her a global star she had been working in the business. “I had worked since I was 12 and made really good money,” she said. “I could afford not to have to go and work everyday. I was able to enjoy time with people in my life and explore some of the things that interested me personally not having anything to do with being in the spotlight. It was kind of like a personal journey of self-discovery that took me on”.
After time though, it felt right to get back into it and her upcoming tour will be the first time Marta has become Martika in over 20 years. “I came to find that music was in my blood. So I was always finding myself writing songs and the next thing I was back in the studio and then everyone was asking if I would put out another album. As soon as I started thinking about all it entails I would think “I don’t have to put this record out”. There’s enough people making music. But in the last few years I started to work on other projects behind the scenes and musical things but nothing related to the Martika catalogue. This is really the first time that I am reawakening that past catalogue of songs and putting myself out in the world”.
Martika tickets are on sale now. Check out the dates here.
