Martika opens up on her decision to walk away from the music industry in her early 20s in a newly-unearthed archive interview.

The pop star released two albums – ‘Martika’ (1988) and ‘Martika’s Kitchen’ (1991) – and scored hits such as More Than You Know, Toy Soldiers and Love… Thy Will Be Done, before calling time on her recording career in the early 1990s. 

Speaking in a 2012 interview printed in Retro Pop’s September 2022 issue, the hitmaker looks back on the series of events that led to her quitting the charts altogether. 

“I think it was too much, too soon, too young,” she says. “It was very overwhelming for me at the time and the pace didn’t feel like a human pace. 

“If you want the truth, I didn’t like life in the public eye at the time, so I sort of shied away from it all for a long time. I just wasn’t really prepared. Nobody really talked to me and walked me through.”

She adds: “I was so young and I didn’t really understand or learn what would be entailed, what would be expected of me. It was just like, ‘Oh really, wow,’ and within my inner circle – within my organisation – there were things coming apart. It was just one of those things…”

At the time of speaking, Martika was working on a comeback album titled ‘The Mirrorball’, which has yet to be released, and she goes on to muse on the possibility of writing her memoirs. 

The I Feel The Earth Move star adds: “There is a book in me, but I probably won’t ever write it – unless I’m really, really old, and mostly everybody’s dead. 

“Because, it wouldn’t be fun unless you tell the good, juicy stuff, right?”

Read the full interview in the September 2022 edition of Retro Pop, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store or use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist.