I've never been a fan of Ricky Martin's music.  Sure, there have been a few songs that I considered tolerable; there are even fewer that I considered entertaining.  Most of it, in my opinion, is so much teen-targeting pop with which I am completely insouciant.  For that reason, I ignored the announcements of late heralding Life, his latest album.  I believe the term I used was "whatever".

Then I saw an interview with him and a few brief snippets from the video for "I Don't Care", our first exposure to his latest work.  Oddly enough, I inadvertently was caught off guard by both the music and Ricky himself.

I've always had a weakness for Latin men.  Sorry, but it's true.  I also have a terrible weakness for tattoos (more importantly, tattoos on men).  Given his clean-cut, teenybopper look held over from the days of Menudo, I always viewed him as a good-looking guy who needed to change his image.  This was not disdain, of course, but it was certainly standoffish.

The newly reinvented Ricky Martin is quite different.  He's added tattoos strategically inked in readily obvious places, he's sporting whiskers to modify his otherwise boyish good looks with which he was cursed (ah, that we could all be so cursed!), and, if "I Don't Care" is any indication, he has modified his music with maturity and a worldly depth.

Given the tease of what I saw and heard from the video, I hunted down his site in order to listen to the entire song.  Wow!  While it still reeks of Ricky Martin and a certain teen enticement by way of the lyrics, the music clearly demonstrates a new maturity for the man.  This song — and it's the only one from the album that I've heard, so I can't speak to any of the other songs — has a beat and melody reminiscent of classic Indian music (i.e., from India).  This newfound musical diversity, from the reviews I've read, seems to permeate this album, demonstrating that he has matured out of the tiresomely predictable pop motif into something of greater consequence.

Perhaps it is because I'm such a fan of world music that I became so enthralled with this one song.  I listened to it many times over, enjoying the beat and strings which were accented and embellished with Middle Eastern sounds.  This seemed alien when compared to his previous music.  In fact, if one were to ignore the vocals altogether, it would become increasingly difficult to identify this as anything other than a song native to that part of the world.

Add to the music itself a clear indication that he is now pushing his voice, modest thought it may be, past its limits or normalcy.  Perhaps this is an attempt to match the intensity of the new sound of his music.  Given the amount of time since his last album and his interim travels around the globe, it's possible that he has found a greater depth and strength from which to exercise his vocals.

Regardless of all of this, however, I shan't run out and buy the album just yet.  I've only heard the one song and, while it has definitely captured my attention, you know how it goes with music these days — a CD will normally only have one or two songs that are even good; the rest of it is crap.  And the music industry wonders why they're losing business to theft.  If you'd make it easer for us to get the music we want without having to overpay for junk that should never have been produced, I imagine all the concerns over copyright infringement would be negated.  But that's another story.

I do intend to listen to the rest of the tracks on this album to see if "I Don't Care" is an anomaly or if he was able to maintain this new maturity throughout the rest of the songs.  It will be quite interesting to see if he's gotten any closer to discovering his individual sound or if this is yet another floundering attempt to stay in the boring middle of the music highway.

In the meantime, his new look is fantastic — dare I say fabulous?  Hey, if Dubya can use that word, so can I.  Whether the little Latin boy in butch drag (I mean Ricky Martin, not George W. Bush) succeeded at reinventing his music remains to be seen, but he's done a damn find job of reinventing his image.  I sure don't mind looking at him.

If you want to hear the song I'm talking about (and others from his new album), or even if you just want to ogle the man (hey, there's nothing wrong with a healthy fantasy life, eh?), head over to his site.