Album’s Debut at No. 1 Signals Boom in Latino Music

Puerto Rican heartthrob Ricky Martin’s first all-English-language album landed at No. 1 on the nation’s pop music charts Wednesday, and its arrival means more than a boom in dance-floor booty shaking.

For a record industry desperate for new sounds and stars, Martin’s success is being widely seen as the start of the “Latin crossover phenomenon,” whereby Latino artists--U.S.-born and otherwise--who have made names (and millions) for themselves in Spanish are sold on the “mainstream” charts.

“Not for a very long time have we seen a new artist with the star power of Ricky Martin,” said Tom Calderone, MTV’s chief of programming. “We played his video and the next day it was among the most requested . . . for a brand new artist to catapult to the top like that, we just don’t see that.”

Martin’s album sold 661,000 copies in its first week, by far the year’s best debut and easily the best ever by a Latino artist on the mainstream charts. The album’s ubiquitous first single, “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” has been the hottest song on U.S. radio for a month and among the most requested videos on MTV.

That success is part of the reason the five major record companies, all of which have Latin divisions, are scrambling to find their piece of the crossover puzzle.

“ ‘Get me a Ricky Martin’--I hear it every single day,” said Don Ienner, chairman and president of Martin’s label, Columbia Records, referring to his competitors.

Insiders say Interscope Records, which was recently purchased by Seagram Co.’s Universal Music Group, is close to making a major strike by signing Enrique Iglesias for his first recording in English. That signing would end a frenzied bidding war for the singer--son of famed crooner Julio Iglesias--who, according to his former label, has sold 13 million albums worldwide.

Martin’s phenomenal success and the prospects for other artists, however, belie white America’s continuing struggle to come to terms with the breadth and complexity of the Latino community in the United States. Recently on MTV, a veejay marveled in prime time, in all seriousness, at the ability of Martin to speak “perfect English.”

One thing, however, is certain: Martin has replaced the Taco Bell Chihuahua as the primary representation of Latino culture in the mainstream media.

Changing Demographics

The music industry has an eye to the changing demographics in the United States, where there are about 30 million Latinos, most of them under 30, and where Latinos will soon become the nation’s largest minority group.

Martin’s success also reflects shifts in national and international music buying patterns, where sales of Latin music are growing at twice the industry rate. In the United States--the world’s largest consumer of Latin music--the most popular FM radio stations in New York City and Los Angeles are Spanish-language, and Latin concerts make up as much as 40% of the offerings at major venues such as Universal Amphitheatre and Madison Square Garden.

At the Trends Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y., director Gerald Celente has been predicting for years that Latin pop would be huge, in part because of national demographics, but also because, he says, younger Americans tend to be more culturally open and less apt to narrowly categorize music.

“[Latin] is going to become just another lane of pop music,” said MTV’s Calderone. “Artists like Marc Anthony are relegated to the world music sections in record stores and in a another year they won’t be.”

“Everyone in this business is excited by what’s happening with Ricky Martin,” said Strauss Zelnick, president and chief executive of BMG Entertainment. “Superstars are good for our business, no matter whose label they’re on. It gets people into record stores, and they buy more records. Certainly it has created more visibility for Latin artists in general.”

Gradual Movement

But many Latino artists and executives are annoyed by media coverage of the crossover “phenomenon,” which they say is not a flash point, but is instead a gradual, overdue movement, pushed along by the untimely death in 1995 of tejano star Selena, who remains on the mainstream charts to this day, and Martin’s show-stopping Grammy awards telecast performance this February.

“Most of us just laugh when we see all these stories,” said Thomas D. Mottola, chairman and chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment. “This is hot news right now, but we’ve been doing this for 10 years. . . . This is really not a new business to us.”

Sony Records is ahead of the pack with its group of Latino artists that includes Martin, salsa singer Marc Anthony and movie star-turned-singer Jennifer Lopez, both of Puerto Rican descent, as well as Colombian rock sensation Shakira.

Mottola, who helped push singers Gloria Estefan and Julio Iglesias into mainstream markets in the ‘80s, and others say the references to Martin and others as Latin pop artists are misleading. “He’s just a great pop artist, period,” Mottola said.

Nonetheless, Martin’s rise has made “Latin pop” a watchword for music executives, and there is no denying that many are searching to find their own nuggets.

The danger of a gold rush, Columbia’s Ienner said, is that some singers will be signed based on their looks and backgrounds, not their talents. He cited Martin’s resume--his years in the teenage band Menudo, exhaustive international tours, a stint on Broadway, a soap opera role--as the source of the singer’s “overnight” success, not some easily copied formula.

“It’s the same as the Seattle scene,” Ienner said, referring to the mad scramble to sign grunge artists in the wake of Nirvana and Pearl Jam in the early ‘90s. Many of the groups inked to deals turned out to be “shoe gazers, not stars.”

Russ Thyret, Warner Bros. chairman and chief executive, says the Martin success story will help worthwhile artists.

“[Martin’s success] may be the thing that breaks through and we’ll see other artists emerge,” Thyret said. “A huge debut like this transcends one marketplace and opens doors, which is very good for the music business.”

Warner has recently inked a pact with Silverlight Records, a Los Angeles-based label that handles Latino artists performing in English. Silverlight probably will draw a massive response to a talent search later this year--but how will the new music tapped by that and other efforts be appreciated by the mainstream U.S. audience?

The clumsiness of mainstream America in dealing with the “new” stars coming out of the diverse Latin music world testifies to long-held entertainment industry stereotypes of Latinos, sources say. For many artists, that’s the price to be paid for the long overdue attention finally being accorded to their work.

“I think the exposure that the crossover market provides is, in the end, a good thing for all Latin artists,” said Ricardo Dopico, head of Latin music for the Recording Industry Assn. of America.

Martin soon will be joined by a gaggle of other Latino artists poised for crossover debuts, including Pittsburgh teenage vocal sensation Christina Aguilera, who recorded on the “Mulan” soundtrack and whose English R&B; debut album is coming out next month on RCA, followed by a Spanish record.

EMI Latin, the label credited with discovering Selena and spearheading the crossover movement years ago, has two major players lined up: pop singers Carlos Ponce and Millie. Jose Behar, president and chief executive of the label, says he realized long ago that U.S. Latinos would purchase music by their favorite artists in English or Spanish, a fact most major labels are only now starting the recognize.

Perhaps most interesting in the current crossover equation is the success of a New York merengue singer named Elvis Crespo. Though Crespo records only in Spanish, he has two albums on the Billboard Top 200 charts right now. Crespo’s most recent album, “Pintame,” debuted last week at No. 49, ahead of the much-hyped album by British pop singer Robbie Williams.

“[Crespo] demonstrates what I’ve been talking about all along,” said Mottola. “Great music transcends language.”

Even Martin has said that recording in English is not a means to success, but rather an additional success--citing his Spanish song, “La Copa de La Vida,” which was No. 1 in 22 nations last year.

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Ricky Martin

Album sells 661,000 copies in first week, the year’s best debut.

Debut was bigger than Puff Daddy’s “No Way Out” (560,862 in July, 1997)