THE RICKY REVOLUTION
2020 was set to be a big year musically for Ricky Martin. He’d come into it with a Latin American tour on the books, which started in Puerto Rico in January before he traveled to Argentina and Chile, then landed in Los Angeles. But when Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down the state of California with a shelter-in-place order in March, the rest of Martin’s tour was postponed. As a result, the singer experienced something he never had in three decades of performing at sold-out arenas, on television, and more. He was hit with anxiety.
“I went through this mourning process of me letting go of the possibility of ever performing in front of 20,000 people again,” Martin says in a Zoom call from his Los Angeles home. “That’s what they were telling us. For me it was like, I don’t know how to do anything else. I always thought I was going to be able to do this as long as I wanted to—even if I looked ridiculous onstage at 70 years old with a cane, it was my option. But apparently that was no more.”
And while he
