5 minute read

Patrick Martin

PATRICK MARTIN’s music will have you nostalgic about your first love. Martin is a hopeful romantic and despite it all, believes that in real, incredible love exists. His debut single “Cinema Love” is an ode to just that: a powerful pop ballad that depicts the extraordinary kind of love that most people believe only exists in movies. However, Martin has experienced it first-hand. With only two singles out, Martin is already making a name for himself by appearing on Spotify’s release radar and having fans like Tyler Oakley. Although his album isn’t due until later this year, we can’t wait to embark on a magical love story, which might even turn the most cold-hearted cynics into romantics.

“You know that love everyone sees the movie? That’s what I experienced,” Martin explains, remarkingabout his single ‘Cinema Love.’ “What everyone longs for, what everyone doesn’t think exists. I’veexperienced it, I’ve lived it. It may be a glimpse of one night, but it does exist.”

Martin grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, but has more recently made Los Angeles his home. He says growing up in the Midwest influenced him as a person, which has rubbed off on his music. “People can usually tell that I’m not from here, that I’m from the Midwest,” Martin laughs. He says it’s the relationships and people he met while living in Wisconsin that have influenced his storytelling more than his hometown itself, with an upcoming song based on the small town he grew up in.

“There’s a song to have coming out at some point that is about growing up and being from a small town,” Martin says. “I’d sneak out of my house with a girl and we’d just go drive around and we just go park in an empty parking lot and make out and shit like that. I feel like that’s a very small town thing to do because there wasn’t really much else to do.”

Martin’s his first album is love-based and eclectic because he’s not currently signed to a major label.However, his voice that melts like butter as he belts pop anthems like “Stranger Nights,” which cananyone’s attention.

Inspired by the classic rock he listened to growing up, which consisted of The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Seger and Rod Stewart, Martin explains he’s drawn to anthemic sounds. “When I write, I think about what I grew up listening to it and what really just hit me over and over and over again,” Martin explains, sharing how the heartbreak of Damien Rice’s “Blower’s Daughter” and John Mayer’s “Gravity” shaped his songwriting.

Although Martin is drawn to powerful storytelling and sounds, he wants to createtimeless music that makes people feel something.

“I certainly have my share of ballads in mid-tempo songs, but a lot of times my songs end up leaning towards anthemic, dancier things that people just want to jump up and down [to] and scream every single word,” Martin reveals. “That’s what I enjoy listening to when I go to concerts and it’s a real experience. It’s something that you walk away from a show and [are] like, ‘That song gave me life.’”

As successful as Martin’s debut singles are, he was originally wanted to be a therapist and studied psychology and sociology. After studying at a research lab, Martin explained he “wasn’t cut out for sitting on a computer going through data for 10 hours” and began following his passion by working with an electronic producer and moving to Los Angeles. It paid off. Martin now has over 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, as fans eagerly await the release of his album.

As a ‘lover of life’ and hopeful romantic, Martin says he likes the ‘cute shit’ and is a chipper, excitable person who takes time to admire flowers and dogs. One thing he loves is a good romantic movie, as he gushed about his favorite films, which include Like, Crazy and Before Sunrise. In fact, he once built a girl a table, similar to what happens in Like, Crazy.

“She just wanted a Bonsai tree, so I made this little table and we named the treeBuddy and I carved the name Buddy into this little table that I made for her and Isurprised her with it,” Martin smiles.

It’s Martin’s romantic soul and first love is what drove the songwriting process for the album. “I feel like that’s common for a lot of artists — that’s what gets people,” Martin explains. “I mean, writing to begin with is when they’re broken hearted and they just need an outlet. So my music now is very love-leaning and it’s very much based off relationship, one in particular, well two in particular, but mostly the first one.”

Talking about his first love is hard, even though the relationship ended years ago. “I still think about her,” Martin shares. “I still wonder what she’s doing. I wonder how she’s doing. A lot of that is she’s been my muse for so long and it’s difficult. I have incredibly vivid dreams about her, that just you wake up and it felt so real and I don’t think I would be having those all the time if I wasn’t constantly talking about her and writing about her. It’s like I’m not actually moving on from this whole story because I’m still talking about it all the time.”

128His debut single “Cinema Love” was based off of one night between Martin and the girl when they started dating and they went back to his parent’s house. Martin is nostalgic as he reminisces on the vivid memory. “We were in my childhood bedroom, which I shared with my brother and we pulled the two mattresses, mine and my brother’s, onto the ground,” Martin recalls. ”We made this kind of fort-type thing and it was just one of those nights where I felt like a little kid … You’re kind of just living for the moment all the time because you don’t have the capacity to be thinking about like your future. That’s what it felt like to me as at however old I was, a 19 or 20 year old kid. It just felt like I was young again and just nothing else existed outside of that bedroom.”

The music video is not for the faint of heart, as it will give you all the feels. With vintage-tones, an old car and movie projector, all wrapped up in a powerful love story, the music video is timeless, like all great love stories. “If I had to make the perfect video that describes me, that would be pretty close,” Martin gushes.

The first love is always the hardest to get over, and Martin is using the final track on the album is an act of closure. “The last song is kind of closing that book to really allow myself to heal from it and allow myself to move on entirely.”

When Martin’s album drops, you can expect pop ballads and feel-good, dancy songs. We’re so excited to hear the ending of Martin’s love story and hear his debut album. Whatever you do, don’t break his heart.