How my songs begin: the first line as a doorway

«Hoy me levanté con glitter en la cara» («Today I woke up with glitter on my face»).

That's how «Marica chill» begins. Eight words in English, seven in Spanish, and we already know nearly everything: it's morning, there was a party last night, whoever is talking hasn't taken their make-up off, and they have no intention of apologising for it. The chorus hasn't arrived. We don't yet know what the song is about. But we're already inside. (The full lyric of «Marica chill» lives on gayfolkplanet.com.)

Not long ago I wrote about how my songs end: the slammed doors, the good riddances, the last lines. This is the other half. If the ending is what you take home, the beginning decides whether you come in at all. A song has very little time to persuade someone whose thumb is already hovering over the next track. The first line is the door. And a door can be flung wide open, left ajar, or jammed shut with a chair.

I recently reread the openings of my published lyrics one after another, with the rest of each song cut away. It's a strange exercise, like watching only the opening frames of a hundred films. Patterns surface that you never notice when each song keeps to itself. Some songs begin with the time of day. Others begin with a question no one will answer. Others with an insult, with a roll call of names, with an «and» that arrives mid-sentence, with a poisoned thank-you, or with a sound that hasn't yet become a word.

This piece wanders through those doors. Not to hand out recipes, because every song asks for its own, but to see what each kind of opening does to the person listening.

Today, the word that opens the most

If I had to pick the word my songs most often start with, it would be «hoy»: today.

«Hoy me levanté con glitter en la cara», in «Marica chill». «Hoy es el día de la liberación» («Today is liberation day»), in the title track of the trilogy's third album. «Hoy es el día montaña rusa» («Today is a rollercoaster day»), in «Montaña rusa». «Hoy vengo a darlo todo» («Today I've come to give it everything»), in «Flash». «Hoy es uno de esos días que me llegan las ojeras al suelo de tanto llorar» («Today is one of those days when the bags under my eyes reach the floor from crying»), in «Judith Bécker». «Hoy estoy celebrando un entierro en Madrid» («Today I'm celebrating a funeral in Madrid»), in «Un puñetazo al día».

Six very different songs. One is a beach party in Spanglish, one a break-up anthem, one an anxiety attack staged as a fairground ride, one a nightclub rush, one a sob on the sofa, and the last a funeral thrown like a wedding. And all of them open on the same word.

I think «today» works because it starts the clock. It isn't «once upon a time», which sounds like a fairy tale. It isn't «always», which sounds like a grievance. «Today» says this is happening now, that whoever's talking hasn't had time to tidy their feelings, that they're telling us while it's still hot. It's the word of the private diary and the evening news at once.

And there's something else. «Today» implies that yesterday was different. If today I woke up with glitter, yesterday I didn't. If today is liberation day, yesterday wasn't. A single word draws a line between before and after, and the whole song lives on the far side of it.

The exact hour and the light in the room

Close cousins of «today» are the openings that set the hour or the light.

«El espejo de enfrente» begins in the half-dark before dawn, with the moon hiding a pale shadow. «Garrafón de China» begins «esta mañana», this morning, with a stranger in the bed. «Dark Corners» begins in English with someone waking late to a sunless day. «The Great Depression» begins in October. «El abismo en mi cabeza» begins with the night, shouting a name once again.

Setting the hour at the top is a trick borrowed from theatre and film: before anyone speaks, the set tells you whether it's day or night. A song has no set, so the first line has to work as the lighting rig. Dawn means insomnia. Morning means hangover. October means summer is over and something is about to fall.

What interests me is the gap between those two mornings. The one in «Garrafón de China» is pure comedy: a head about to burst, no idea who the bloke beside you is, and the blame pinned on a muscle man behind the bar who poured bootleg spirits. The one in «El espejo de enfrente» isn't funny at all: someone looks at themselves and can't manage to live in the present. The same slice of the day, two different genres. The first line doesn't just tell the time. It tells you what kind of time it is.

Opening with a question nobody answers

Another big family of songs begins by asking.

«El concierto de Ismael Serrano» opens with a reproach dressed up as a question: why did you promise to come with me to the concert? Then it asks again. And again. The answer never comes, because the person being asked isn't in the queue. That's the joke and that's the ache: someone who's been waiting since early morning, putting questions to an empty space.

«El impostor» begins with a question aimed at the audience, almost like a game-show host: do you want to know how I found out, six years in, that he'd never been in love with me? Here the question is a storyteller's hook. Whoever's talking knows the answer perfectly well; the question just pulls us closer, the way someone at a dinner says «guess what happened to me» and every fork goes down.

«Una obra de teatro» opens with disbelief: are you telling me it was all a play? «Ni un pimiento» opens with something close to philosophy: why does it feel like nothing matters any more?

Four kinds of question, then. The one that reproaches, the one that reels you in, the one that can't believe its ears, and the one that doubts the world. What they share is that they put the listener somewhere uncomfortable. A question demands an answer. When a song opens with one, the ear keeps waiting for something that won't arrive, and that waiting is what keeps you listening.

Walking in with an insult

Some songs don't bother to say hello.

«Buscando el polvo perfecto» begins with «Eres gordo, eres calvo»: you're fat, you're bald. Two insults in five words, no context, no introduction. On a first listen there's a second where you can't tell whether the narrator is saying it, hearing it, or quoting it. Then the lyric makes it clear: this is the language of dating apps, the cruel catalogue of the one who browses and discards. But that second of disorientation is the whole point of the opening. The song hits you before it explains why.

«Antisocial» begins with «Me llaman puta basura»: they call me trash, a whore. Here the insult comes from outside, and the very next line takes it apart. «Dientes, dientes» begins with a warning, «Ten cuidado que la envidia mata», mind yourself, envy kills, which sounds like a threat lifted from a book of proverbs. «Al fuego» begins with a conditional that lands on a swear word: if I'd known you didn't give a damn.

Opening with an insult is risky. It can drive someone off in the first line. But it has one advantage: it settles the tone from the start. No one who keeps listening after «you're fat, you're bald» is going to be shocked by what follows. The first line works like a contract. If you stay, you know where you are.

A roll call of names as the curtain rises

An extreme case is «La chusta nunca disgusta», which opens with nothing but first names: Sergio, Martina, Elías, Iván, Carmen, Abel, Raquel, Julián, Noelia, Ernesto, Laia, Tatiana.

No verb. No subject. No story. Just names, one after another, as if someone were reading out the census of a single night. And that's exactly what the song does: it tells the night through the people who passed through it. The names are invented, surname-less characters who could be anyone.

There's something of the cast list about this kind of opening, the sheet you read before the curtain goes up. Before the play starts, you already know how crowded the stage will be. And the pile-up does its own work: by the sixth name, the listener understands it isn't about any one of them, but about the sheer number. The joke is in the headcount.

Starting with «and», halfway through a conversation

Some of my favourite openings aren't beginnings at all. They're continuations.

«Bareback» begins with «Y todavía no nos hemos emborrachado»: and we still haven't got drunk. «Tu mendigo» begins with «Y tú, tan convencido de que sigo siendo tu mendigo»: and you, so sure I'm still your beggar. «Karma» begins with «Y no me acordaba cuánto dolía que te den un puñetazo al día»: and I'd forgotten how much it hurts to take a punch a day.

That opening «and» is tiny, but it changes everything. A sentence that starts with «and» assumes there was one before it. We sit down in the middle of a conversation that began without us. It's like walking into a bar and catching two people at the next table: you don't know what happened, but you know something did, and you want to find out.

«Quien miente y jura» goes further still. Its published lyric begins with «para salvar su amor», to save their love, which is the back half of a sentence. The front half is the title. The title says whoever lies and swears, and the first line carries on: to save their love, is in fact condemning it. Title and opening line make one sentence snapped in two, like a proverb one person starts and another finishes.

«Me rindo» and «Y sigo temblando siempre» share an opening: «Porque cuando abro mi corazón de verdad», because when I truly open my heart. Another beginning that's really a reply. Because what? Who asked? Nobody, in the lyric. The question is implied. To begin with «because» is to begin by defending yourself against something that hasn't been said yet.

Thank you, with a drop of venom

There's one kind of opening that makes me smile because it looks so polite.

«Limón» begins with «Muchas gracias por hacerme tan feliz»: thank you so much for making me so happy. And here the thanks is sincere, because Limón is a dog, and the song is a lullaby to send him off to sleep. The gratitude in that first line hides nothing; it belongs to someone talking to their animal before switching off the light.

«Esperma» begins almost as sweetly: honestly, I loved how much you cared. But here the sweetness is pure irony. What follows leaves no doubt, with a «you disgust me» arriving a few lines later. The first line is a smile through clenched teeth.

Putting those two songs side by side teaches something about openings. The same courteous words can be a caress or a slap, and the first line doesn't always tell you which. Sometimes a song needs a few seconds to reveal whether the thank-you was meant. That ambiguity is useful: it forces you to hear the second line to learn how you should have heard the first.

This is the story

Then there are the storyteller's openings.

«Doña Rogelia» begins with «Esta es la historia de cómo una vez»: this is the story of how, once. «La empatía de la arpía» begins with «Esta es la historia de la empatía de la arpía»: this is the story of the harpy's empathy. «Como a mi chihuahua» begins with «Te voy a contar por qué no veo las noticias»: let me tell you why I don't watch the news. «Croquetas en el crucero» begins with «Me apunté a un crucero por el Mediterráneo»: I signed up for a Mediterranean cruise.

This is the oldest opening in the world. It's the «once upon a time» of fairy tales and the «hear ye, good people» of the blind ballad-sellers who once recited the news in Spanish town squares. It announces a whole story is coming, the kind told in a single sitting. And it makes a promise: stay to the end and you'll learn how it turns out.

The fun part is that in my lyrics this solemn formula usually ushers in stories that are anything but solemn. «Doña Rogelia» uses «this is the story» to show how art exposes a fraud. «Croquetas en el crucero» sets off like a holiday brochure, with beaches, sunshine and maybe an Italian, and ends at a buffet with none of what was promised. The serious narrator makes the later stumble hurt more and land funnier.

A thesis in the first line

Other songs open the way an essay does: with a sweeping claim.

«El narcisista» begins by declaring that the narcissist hates whoever loves him. «Mentes diabólicas» begins with a line in quotation marks, the world is a stage where we all play a part, echoing the old Spanish idea of the great theatre of the world. «Canguros» begins with «Dicen que hay un límite en el mundo»: they say there's an edge to the world. «Un político español» begins with waiting: we'll have to wait and wait for an honest politician to show up.

This kind of opening is a different gamble. It doesn't set a scene, introduce a character or ask a question. It puts an idea on the table, and the song spends its length proving it, nuancing it or laughing at it. It's the opening of the sermon, the editorial and the proverb.

I'm especially fond of «Canguros» because it starts with «they say». It isn't me making the claim; it's what people say. An edge to the world, a lighthouse on the bay, a star to follow. The song begins with hearsay, with what gets passed around, and from there it leaps into imagining a place beyond that edge. The first line is an old map the song is about to cross out.

Starting with the weather inside

Some songs open with an inner weather report.

«Otro bombardeo» begins with «Estoy tan triste y no puedo parar de llorar»: I'm so sad and I can't stop crying. «No me aparece una ilusión» and «Entre cuatro paredes» open on near-identical lines about not wanting to leave the bedroom. «Ruido en mi mente» begins with echoes crashing around inside.

There's no trick here. No question, no irony, no narrator promising a tale. There's someone saying how they are, in the plainest sentence possible. And I think that's a craft too: knowing when a song needs a clever opening and when it needs a bare one. When someone is that low, any decoration in the first line would ring false.

If any of those first lines describes you these days, don't leave it inside a song. Talk to someone you trust. In Spain you can call 024, the suicide-prevention line, free and at any hour, or 112 in an emergency. If you're outside Spain, call your local emergency number.

When the first line is a sound

Some published lyrics begin before the words do.

«Before the Bells» opens with a drawn-out lament, «ay mi pena, ay mi penita», oh my sorrow, my little sorrow, written in the published lyric with a long tumble of a's and y's. «Gofio de calcetín» begins with a murmur, mmmmmm, before the story gets going. «Dreams Drift Afar» also starts with a hum and a few na-na-nas.

Those openings work like clearing your throat before you speak, or like the keening cry that launches so much flamenco. They say nothing and everything: they set the mood. A long «ay» announces grief. A «mmm» announces someone working out what to say, or about to let slip something that costs them.

A word of caution, though: the way those vowels are spelt out in the published lyric isn't always a writing choice of mine. What is in the lyric is the idea of starting with a sound instead of a sentence. And that says something about how you enter a sad song: before you explain, you sigh.

Starting in English

Part of the catalogue opens in English, and that changes the door as well.

«Barcelona» begins with city lights at midnight. «Not Your Supply» begins with a flat, cold line: you call when you are empty. «The Great Depression» begins with an October that bites like cheap gin. «Marica chill» starts in Spanish and by the second line has already jumped into English.

When the first line is in another language, a listener in Spain shifts into another mode. They expect something else: other music, another kind of story. And that opens room to play. «The Great Depression» uses its English to tell of love between men in the 1930s, an era when it couldn't be spoken, and the foreign language adds distance, like an old black-and-white photograph. «Not Your Supply» uses English to sound like a diagnosis, with the chill of someone who's already read everything there is to read about narcissism.

In «Marica chill», the switch in the second line is almost the punchline: a Madrid hangover morning that suddenly starts talking like a social-media clip, and two lines later drops back into Spanish to order «Un café solo, sin leche y sin drama», a black coffee, no milk and no drama. The first line keeps a foot at home; the second is already on the beach.

What the title has already said

There's one last kind of opening that only makes sense next to the title.

«Ese chulito» begins with «Ese chulito me gusta demasiado»: I like that cocky lad far too much. «Voy a olvidarme de ti» begins with «Voy a olvidar un te quiero»: I'm going to forget an I love you. «Montaña rusa» begins with «Hoy es el día montaña rusa». «Hoy es el último adiós» begins with «yo solo he venido a decirte que hoy es el último adiós»: I've only come to tell you that today is the last goodbye.

Repeating the title in the first line is like putting your name on the door. There's no surprise, and none is wanted. The aim is that, by the time the chorus arrives, you already know it by heart. In a dance track or a very direct break-up song, that repetition makes sense: the listener needs something to grab, and fast.

The opposite approach is «Quien miente y jura», where the first line finishes the title instead of repeating it. Both treat the title as part of the lyric rather than a label stuck on top. The difference is that one says it twice and the other completes it.

What the first seconds decide

After reading all these openings in a row, I'm left with a few conclusions.

The first is that the opening line decides the genre before the music does. «You're fat, you're bald» says savage comedy. «In the half-dark before dawn» says drama. «This is the story» says fable. Before we know what the song is about, we know how to listen to it.

The second is that the best openings leave something unexplained. The «and» that assumes an earlier conversation. The question with no answer. The thank-you you can't quite trust. The list of names with no verb. Each time, the first line opens a gap, and the rest of the song is how long it takes to fill it.

The third is that some songs need honesty in the first line more than wit. «I'm so sad» isn't a clever opening in any technical sense. It's a true one, and that weighs more.

And the fourth is that, read together, the opening lines of a catalogue end up as a portrait of whoever signed them. Plenty of «today», plenty of questions, plenty of insults before hello, plenty of stories announced with great ceremony only to trip on the next step. If someone read nothing but the first lines of my songs, I think they'd get a fairly accurate picture of how I talk when I walk into a room.

The door I leave open

I'll finish with a song that doesn't open with my words but with someone else's. «Toxina coreana» begins with a best friend saying: oye, tía, tienes mala cara. Girl, you look awful.

It's a borrowed opening. The first thing we hear isn't the song's protagonist but someone looking at them from outside and handing over an uncomfortable truth. From there on, the song is the reply. It feels like a good place to close, because it's a reminder that a first line doesn't have to be a confession. It can be what someone else tells you, and the song is what you say back.

If I had to boil all of this down to a sentence, I'd say a good first line doesn't explain the song. It opens it. And then it steps aside, so anyone who wants to can walk through.

Frequently asked questions

Which word do most Mike Sain't Louis songs begin with? «Hoy», today. «Marica chill», «El día de la liberación», «Montaña rusa», «Flash», «Judith Bécker» and «Un puñetazo al día» all open that way, among others.

Which songs open with a question? «El concierto de Ismael Serrano», «El impostor», «Una obra de teatro» and «Ni un pimiento» begin with questions the song never answers directly.

Why does «Quien miente y jura» start in the middle of a sentence? Because its first line, «para salvar su amor», finishes the title. Title and opening line form one sentence: whoever lies and swears to save their love is in fact condemning it.

Who writes these songs? Mike Sain't Louis, lyricist, composer and music producer from Madrid, who presents himself as the first AI songwriter. The music and vocals of his songs are made with artificial intelligence.