Sepang. Singapore. Los Angeles. In just 10 days, Martin Garrix has hurtled through all three at a cadence for which the Dutch DJ and producer is known. Garrix has toured internationally since he was 16. Now 30, he’s spent nearly half his life on the road or somewhere between stops.
A schedule this demanding breeds battle-tested travel and performance acumen. How to beat jet lag in its own ring. Where to securely stash the USB flash drives (containing his music library) when living out of a suitcase. How to pace a 60-minute set at one of the world’s biggest and most consequential dance music festivals.
None of that expertise renders Garrix immune to a peculiar rite of passage at 30: “I realize I don’t know shit,” he tells Rolling Stone. “And that’s a very incredible feeling. There’s so much I can still grow into, so much I can still learn.”
Some of it will unfold in the form of vocal lessons on the heels of tour dates in Mexico City, with Amsterdam on the horizon. More than a decade into his career, he’s increasingly interested in who Martin Garrix might be beyond the DJ booth. Over the past year, and especially these days, much of that curiosity is being distilled into a project years in the making: his debut album, MARTY. The 14-track LP, named after his first DJ alias, lands March 5, 2027, via Darkroom Records and his own label, STMPD RCRDS.
“Debut album” forces a pause. Sentio was marketed as such in 2022, but Garrix, who calls it a “club album,” sees no contradiction. “[MARTY] feels like the first pop album — pop-dance, basically,” he clarifies.
There’s a clear logic to positioning it as his definitive debut. Identity has a lot to do with that.
The album is both autobiographical and epochal by design. With each song representing a different chapter of his life, MARTY offers an unprecedentedly intimate look inside one of dance music’s most successful and influential minds. Its arc — from his birth on the lead single “Catharina,” written about his mother, through the afterlife and rebirth — sheds light on a question that existing context about him leaves largely unanswered: Who has the now-adult wunderkind, who broke out with “Animals” in 2013, become?
While more collaborators will be announced, the handful confirmed so far should be enough to make even the uninitiated listen for the answer: Madonna (“Bizarre”), U2 (“Fireflies”), Ed Sheeran (“Rewind Repeat It,” made more than a decade ago), and AITANA on Garrix’s first, as-yet-untitled song in Spanish. (“Bizarre” also appeared on the Queen of Pop’s Confessions II.)
Courtesy of Martin Garrix“I got to work with some incredible, legendary artists, so it’s very surreal,” Garrix says of the features on MARTY, which also marks his first team-up with a K-pop group. “Even when Madonna released her album, I was just like, ‘How is my name on hers?’”
It doesn’t get any more nonpareil than Madonna, but Garrix is no stranger to collisions with pop, rock, and R&B’s upper echelon. There are plenty of examples: 2019’s “Summer Days” with Macklemore and Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump; 2017’s “Scared to Be Lonely” with Dua Lipa; 2015’s “Don’t Look Down” with Usher.
This time, Garrix is doing something he’s long left to his collaborators. He sings solo for the first time on four of the album’s songs — something few producers attempt, and even a shorter list can do well. Two have already been released: “Catharina” and “This Dream Of You.”
“To be honest, the reason I [hadn’t] done it is because I was very comfortable. I was just like, ‘Okay, I’ll just write for others if other people sing,’” he says.
At Bono’s behest, Garrix gradually began building the confidence to step behind the mic. He’s learned, “like a sponge,” from U2’s frontman, who heard early demos, coached him on vocal delivery, and contributed to some lyrics.
Singing is “very far out of my comfort zone,” Garrix confesses, adding that it felt like a creative imperative. “There are some very personal songs on the album. It’d be weird if somebody sang a song about my mom,” he explains. Vocals also serve as a powerful act of reclamation, both of authorship and identity.
Louis Van Baar*“Catharina” was the “soft launch” of Martin Garrix as a solo vocalist — a litmus test for whether the new approach resonated “or if people were like, ‘What the fuck is he doing?’” It did, though many have misread the song to be about romantic rather than maternal love — including some of his close friends.
MARTY was never going to deal strictly in hands-in-the-air moments (but they, too, are there). I posit, has Garrix’s longstanding association with pyrotechnics and seismic drops drawn audiences who expect spectacle over substance? Or has dance music’s bad rap — as fun but vacuous and unserious — tainted the current version of the genre?
Garrix doesn’t disagree, but trusts that depth will come through when people hear MARTY front to back. “I’m definitely excited to show people a bit more than they know,” he says. “A lot of people assume DJs and producers walk up to a show and play music from a USB, but it takes a lot more work when you actually make the music that’s being played. I write everything on guitar, [I sing] demos … I’m excited to take people on this journey. It doesn’t mean I’ll lose my DNA, but I want to grow.”
Liam Payne (left) and Harry Styles of One Direction onstage during the 2013 American Music Awards at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Nov. 24, 2013
Harry Styles Finds the Right Words on Liam Payne Tribute Song
For the past seven weeks, Harry Styles has reserved two minutes at each of his Madison Square Garden shows to reflect on the last time he gathered this many people in this room. Four years have passed since he performed 15 record-breaking nights at the venue during his Love on Tour. Now, every night at the new Together, Together shows, which span 30 nights at MSG, he acknowledges that “a lot of life happened to me and landed on me in ways that maybe it hadn’t before.”
Styles doesn’t usually go into much more detail; he typically just describes those in-between years as “a great reminder for me of just how wonderful and beautiful, difficult and inspiring, and also how fragile a life can be.” He encourages the audience to look around at each other and celebrate the community they’ve built together. Then he dives into “Sign of the Times.” It happens every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday like clockwork. But when he delivered this speech on Friday, Oct. 16, there was a shift. It didn’t conclude in its usual way.
Instead, Styles turned his attention to the banner commemorating his 15 consecutive nights at the Garden in 2022. “It means a lot to be able to look up there at my name up there from the last tour,” he said. “There are so many people, friends and people that I’ve worked with, that I would’ve never been able to do this without.” Two years ago, he continued, he lost one of those pillars. Friday’s show fell on the same day as the second anniversary of the death of Liam Payne, a loss that time has not made it easier to acknowledge. “I’m sure a lot of you have been through something similar,” Styles said. “I hope you haven’t.”
A frequent assessment of Styles, both among his fans and those who’ve only encountered him at a distance, is that he often talks at length before getting to the point. He recognizes it himself on the Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally song “Coming Up Roses,” where he sings about fumbling his words. But recently, comments about his long-winded way of speaking have started to feel like purposeful misreadings. There are clear and carefully considered thoughts present between his starts and stops. Anyone truly listening will pick up on those threads.
Styles cut himself off a few times during his speech on Friday. He tried to talk for a second about looking after each other, and repeated his point about the banner and the people who’ve supported him. He never mentions Payne by name, instead referring to him as a friend, which somehow became a point of criticism from some fans. The context is clear enough. Still, he seems to know it’s a gamble to expect understanding, especially when the conversation grows more complex and personal.
After about a minute and a half, Styles figured it best to show us what he means rather than tell us. “I’m gonna sing a song I wrote two years ago for my friend,” he said before premiering “Wise Enough.” The sullen tribute to Payne settled the room into a cool near-silence, punctured by quiet gasps and muffled crying. It was beautiful, devastating, and deeply exposing to watch Styles share his grief with 20,000 people in the best, and maybe only, way he knows how.
Earlier this year, Styles told Zane Lowe about the acute dread surrounding the expected performance of his mourning. “Full transparency, even the idea of talking about it, I struggle with that a little bit. There was a period when he passed away where I really struggled with acknowledging how strange it is to have people own part of your grief, in a way,” he said. “I have such strong feelings around my friend passing away. And then suddenly being aware there’s maybe a desire from other people of you to convey that in some way, or it means you’re not feeling what you’re feeling.”
Artists often describe the act of sharing new music as a change in ownership, something that is no longer their own once it has been handed over to an audience. “Wise Enough” feels protected from this. It would be confounding to see Styles ever record and release it in any official capacity. The song is openhearted in a way that exposes deep scars, anxious in a way that worries and fidgets about time and how it passes, and inconsolable in a way that doesn’t make the futile attempt to fight through anger, regret, or sadness.
“I can tell you what it’s like to bury friends on Wednesday nights/Gather in a garden around the fire,” Styles sings in a particularly cutting verse on the song, which concludes with an honest admission: “I’m not wise enough to call for a conversation/And then back it up, right?/Like you’re in the sky.”
Celebrity doesn’t obscure grief. It doesn’t come with a script for what to say when someone is sorry for your loss, or when they recollect their own version of the person you knew. No one really has the right words for these moments. Over the weekend, fans debated whether “Wise Enough” is actually titled “What Is Enough?” Styles introduced the record so briskly it was hard to decipher. The question of adequacy feels similarly impossible to answer.
Grief is so plain in how universal it is, but so complex in how and when it chooses to present itself. It can be policed only as much as it can be predicted, which is to say barely at all. That Styles let us into his now yearslong search for some semblance of understanding — knowing how his words have been picked apart before for far lesser things — shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Styles never acknowledges that banner at MSG. It’s not for lack of gratitude — he cried when it was unveiled. But the point he has reiterated every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday since the end of August is that the achievement is something that must be shared because he couldn’t have done it alone. He talks about being on stage as if what happens in that room exists far beyond and outside of himself, something that endures even in his absence.
It’s true in a way. There’s muscle memory tied to the music. It’s in the spinning, dizzying way fans dance to “Satellite,” or the way they wildly kick their feet and make the building shake during “Kiwi,” a song he brought back to the set just for New York. It’s just like before, but still so different.
Friday night continued as usual after “Wise Enough.” Styles belted out “Sign of the Times” in the sobering way he always does, then “Aperture” let in a cathartic flood of strobing lights and pulsating beats. The emotional whiplash took physical form as fans consoled one another, holding out their hands to help up friends and strangers who crumbled to the floor at the conclusion of the tribute. Some were crushed by their memories of loving One Direction, and the care they hold in their hearts for Styles. Some were just as wrecked by their own personal losses.
A lot of life and loss can happen in four years, as Styles says each night. For some people who were at MSG on Friday, there are friends present in their memories from the last tour who are missing from the new ones they’re making. The lyric “You dance until you’re tired/No, you don’t, and now you never will/Will you?” surfaces their own devastation completely separate from what inspired Styles to sprawl those words on a page. How do you dance to “Aperture” — the beating heart of this show in its declaration that “we belong together” — after hearing something like that?
You take the hand of the friend or the stranger who pulled you from the ground and use it to lead each other back to the dance floor. When Styles talks about community and stresses the importance of caring for one another each night, he reminds everyone of the fragility of a moment, and urges them to cherish every second they get. To dance wildly and sing loudly and wrap their arms around each other. To hold tight to what’s here right now.
It’s all any of us have, so it has to be enough.