Marta Sánchez

Spanish dance-pop artist Marta Sánchez launched her recording career as Olé Olé’s lead singer in the mid-1980s, later transitioning to a thriving solo trajectory that took shape in the early 1990s. Replacing Vicky Larraz in Olé Olé, she helped deliver the group’s breakthrough single “Lili Marlen” in 1986. Sánchez stayed with the band until October 1991, when she secured a contract with PolyGram’s Mercury Latino division and stepped out on her own. Her debut solo album, Mujeres (1994), arrived as an opulent production assembled with a vast array of songwriters and session players. The set featured the standout single “Desesperada,” which drove its widespread popularity. Additional releases continued to appear almost yearly throughout the remainder of the decade for the Latin pop performer, among them Woman (1994), My World (1995), Mi Mundo (1995), Azabache (1997), and Desconocida (1998). Compilation projects began to surface in 1999 with Serie Millennium 21, even while Sánchez carried her studio work forward into the new decade, opening with One Step Closer in 2000.