Me

going to land the helicopter so that you can continue by car.”
    We didn’t have much time, and the last thing we wanted was to be disrespectful by arriving late. So the moment we landed, we continued by car at top speed in order to make it on time. The truth is we were going very fast, some 120 miles per hour, the wheels screeching with every turn. Suddenly we arrived at a turn where the car just couldn’t take any more, and it turned upside down! But just as I said, I wasn’t going to let anything get in my way. As soon as we made sure none of us had more than a couple of scratches and bruises, we grabbed all the equipment and looked for a taxi. We finally made it to the red carpet, slightly shaken but on time. “Everything okay?” we were asked. “Yes, yes, yes!” we answered. “Perfect.” My agent later told the press that the car had slipped and we lost control in the rain—though the truth was a little worse than that. But we weren’t going to let a little car accident jeopardize our presence at such an important European music festival!
    As “María” continued to top the charts around the world, many people started asking who this famous “María” might be. They wanted to know if she was someone I knew or wanted to know. Everyone had their own theory, and people’s theories were hilarious! For example, Charly Garcia (a music legend in Latin America; I call him the Great Master of Rock en Español ) said in an interview, “I believe Ricky Martin is eulogizing drugs.” You see, the song’s lyrics say that “This is how María is, white like the day . . . and if you drink from her, she will surely kill you.” And for Charly Garcia, this phrase apparently referred to cocaine. Wow. The fact that Charly Garcia would even talk about one of my songs in one of his interviews was a huge honor. That the Great Master of Rock en Español would even notice my music was a sign that I was doing something right.
    It goes without saying that Charly’s theory was not correct. I sang and danced and performed it at so many of my shows, but until Charly drew the connection to drugs, the idea had never even occurred to me! His interpretation completely changed the way I saw my song. And that is exactly what happens when you put a song out into the world: It becomes everyone’s property and everyone has the right to interpret it and live it as they see fit. Later I’d laugh, because the truth is that once you dive into the subject of cocaine, there is plenty of material to go around.
    Whether people danced because they thought the song was in praise of drugs or because they thought they knew the María who the song was about, the one sure thing is that everyone who heard it danced to it. And that was a lot of people! That summer I did a concert tour in Spain, a run of forty-five shows in thirty-six cities. Then in December I gave four concerts in France and Switzerland, starting in Paris. “María” was already one of the top ten songs there and in Italy. It also received a gold record in Switzerland, Sweden, England, Belgium, and Greece. The song unfurled all over the continent, and I followed it. In total, the album A medio vivir sold over 7 million copies around the world, an astounding figure when compared to my previous sales. Later, concerts and chart-topping hits followed in many more countries, and in each case it was “María” that would continue to open doors for me.
    As “María” took the world by storm, in 1997 I returned to the studio to record my next album. Like everything else in life, music has its own trajectory and everything has its moment. I wanted to release another album before the public’s enthusiasm for A medio vivir started to dissipate, but I didn’t want to disappear completely in the process. So I continued doing the concerts and the ongoing promotion in new markets for A medio vivir while I recorded Vuelve (Come Back) . It was brutal and incredibly intense. When you’re recording an album, you need a certain amount of space to concentrate, think, and connect with your creative being. But when you are on tour, you need to give it everything you’ve got. The permanent contradiction between these two states was, for me, totally draining.
    And I couldn’t rest long because soon another door opened. When we were almost finished with the recording of Vuelve , I was contacted by FIFA: They wanted to know if I was interested in creating a song for the 1998 World Cup,