Martin Garrix Sings on New Album Marty

Martin Garrix is doing something he has never done before: singing on his own album. The Dutch DJ has announced his third full-length record under his own name, titled Marty, with a release date set for early next year. The news, reported by the Groove Cartel, marks a genuine turning point for an artist who spent years building his reputation on main-stage drops and festival-sized hooks.

A decade of drops, then a left turn

To understand why the announcement landed the way it did, it helps to remember what the last ten years sounded like. Garrix broke through as a teenager and spent the better part of a decade headlining festival main stages, where his sets were built for scale: towering builds, chest-rattling drops, and singalong hooks written for tens of thousands of voices at once. A third album under his own name had been the missing piece of that story, and Marty fills it — not with a bigger drop, but with the artist's own voice in the spotlight.

Garrix previewed unreleased material during a recent Spotify event, including at least one track where he handles the vocals himself. Singing is a new development for him, and he has been open about how strange the experience feels. That preview followed Catharina, released this March, which also featured his own voice and signaled a softer, more reflective direction. A second single, This Dream of You, arrived this month — and the two tracks suggest the coming record will sit with a melody instead of racing toward the next build.

A quieter Garrix

In a statement around the single's release, Garrix called the track a special one for him. "Singing is very far outside of my comfort zone, but I've been wanting to push myself, try new things and keep learning," he said. For a producer whose name became shorthand for big-room EDM, putting his own voice — literally — at the center of a project is a deliberate break from the formula that made him famous.

What we know about Marty

The album arrives March 5, 2027, still more than four months away. No tracklist has been revealed, and while the two recent singles could both appear on the record, nothing has been confirmed. The rollout so far has been characteristically patient: the producer has a habit of letting singles breathe before committing to a bigger project, and the two vocal-led tracks released this year read like deliberate stepping stones. The March single first hinted that his own voice would be part of the story, and this month's follow-up arrived with the statement framing the whole project. What is confirmed is the intent: after years of rolling out singles slowly and touring relentlessly, Martin Garrix is making a full-length statement with his own name and his own voice on it.

Why fans should pay attention

The shift matters because Garrix's audience grew up on drops, not verses. A quieter, more personal record from one of dance music's biggest names could signal where the genre's center of gravity is heading — or simply prove that the festival generation is ready to hear its heroes sing. Either way, the move puts him in good company: 2026 has been a busy year for legacy acts rethinking their sound, from Lil Baby's upcoming November release to the wave of TikTok-driven nostalgia pulling older sounds back into the spotlight.

For now, fans have the singles and a date to circle — and a new question to argue about: what does the live show become? A set built around songs he sings himself is a different kind of performance, closer to a concert than a club night, and it will be fascinating to watch how festival crowds respond when the moment they are waiting for turns out to be a chorus instead of a drop. More broadly, the move lands at a moment when electronic music's biggest names are stretching beyond the format that made them, and quieter songwriter-led records are having a genuine moment.

Not everyone will love the pivot. Plenty of fans fell for the producer precisely because his sets were engineered for maximum impact, and a reflective vocal record is a gamble with an audience trained to expect the drop. That tension is exactly what makes Marty interesting: it is the sound of an artist willing to risk the thing that made him famous. If the record delivers on its early promise, Martin Garrix may have found a second act hiding in plain sight — behind the decks, holding a microphone.