Ripped, Tattooed and Going Grey: the body in my lyrics

«Ya se me marcan las abdominales» («my abs are starting to show»).

It's a line from «El espejo de enfrente», from the first album of the trilogy. And it comes right after another line that says the exact opposite: «¡Ay! Qué asco me doy» («God, I disgust myself»).

Almost everything my songs say about the body fits between those two lines. The day the mirror behaves and the day it misbehaves. Pride and disgust. The same face, the same body, and two different verdicts depending on the hour.

My catalogue is full of bodies. Ripped bodies, tattooed bodies, bodies losing their hair, bodies insulted for being fat or bald, bodies showing off in a photo and bodies that remember what the mind would rather forget. There's no song called «the body». But the body turns up everywhere, almost always out of the corner of an eye, in a stray line, the way it turns up in life.

This piece walks through those bodies. Not to talk about mine, which is beside the point, but to see what the published lyrics say about the body that looks at itself and the body that is judged.

The mirror that behaves and the mirror that misbehaves

I'll start with the song that talks most directly about looking at yourself. «El espejo de enfrente», the mirror across the room.

The lyric opens before dawn, in half-light. Someone looks in the mirror and can't manage to live in the present. He feels his head is a weather balloon. And the chorus is weariness said without frills: I'm sick of seeing my bloody face in the mirror across the room.

Then comes a sentence I think is the key to the whole song: «Soy tan cruel» («I'm so cruel»). It doesn't say the mirror is cruel. It says he is. The mirror only reflects. The cruelty belongs to whoever is looking.

And then, towards the end, the song takes an almost comic turn. Some days the mirror behaves: my abs are starting to show, today I'm radiant. And some days it misbehaves: I can't feel my vital signs, I think that's enough.

I love that the mirror «behaves». As if it were a person with moods of its own. As if the blame for how we see ourselves lay with the glass and not with us. It's a way of laughing at something that, in truth, isn't funny at all: that our opinion of our own body can change from one day to the next without the body changing in the slightest.

Anyone who has had a complicated relationship with their reflection knows that seesaw. Radiant on Monday. No vital signs on Tuesday. And the body, in between, exactly the same.

God, I disgust myself

The line «qué asco me doy» isn't alone in my catalogue. The word «asco», disgust, comes and goes through my lyrics, sometimes pointed outwards and sometimes inwards.

In «El espejo de enfrente» it points inwards, and it's stuck to the body. It isn't moral disgust, for something you've done. It's physical disgust, at what you see. And I think that needs saying clearly, because it's one of the most common ways of hurting yourself that I know of in gay culture: looking at yourself through the eyes of the harshest possible judge.

The song doesn't resolve it. There's no final line of restored self-esteem, no moral. There's an «I think that's enough», which can be read in many ways. As in: enough of looking. As in: enough of everything.

I'd rather it stayed like that, open. Songs that fix your self-esteem in three minutes tend to sound like adverts to me.

The app catalogue: you're fat, you're bald

If the mirror is the judge inside, dating apps are the judge outside. And my catalogue has a song that reproduces that judgement word for word.

In «Buscando el polvo perfecto» there's a list of rejections anyone who has used an app will recognise: you're fat, you're bald, you're not what I'm looking for. If I don't answer and I block you, it's because you're really ugly. You're old and not well endowed.

Read out of context, it looks like pure cruelty. Read in context, it's a portrait of cruelty. The lyric puts into the mouth of the judge everything that kind of user thinks and hardly ever dares to type. And it exaggerates it until it's ridiculous, with a line that brings the whole thing down: I am god and you are worn out.

When someone says «I am god» while handing out labels like fat and bald, nothing more needs adding. He has painted his own portrait.

Apps turn the body into a spec sheet. Height, weight, age, torso pic. And on that sheet the body stops being a person and becomes a filter. The song doesn't preach about it. It simply shows it as it is, in its catalogue language, so that it sounds as absurd as it really is.

Ten likes on the abs photo

The body in my songs also lives on the phone. And there it's measured in hearts.

In «Spoiler», from the second album, the person speaking keeps track of how his partner's behaviour changes online. At first he only liked photos of Madonna. A week later, that's not enough for him. Suddenly his profile picture is a pose with perfect lips. He posts stories seducing the camera. And then comes the line that gives it all away: I've counted at least ten likes on the one with the abs.

The one with the abs. You don't even need to say who he is. It's a body turned into a category, the torso-pic guy, one of those oh-so-perfect boys from the live streams. And the lyric doesn't blame him. What it tells is the trail of hearts the other one leaves behind.

I think it's a very precise portrait of how desire works on a screen today. Someone else's body becomes a threat you can count, literally, in likes. And your own body starts to pose: perfect lips, camera, insistence.

Notice the echo with «El espejo de enfrente». There, your own abs start to show on a good day. Here they belong to someone else, on a screen, and what shows is the distance.

Dyed grey and coloured contact lenses

There's a song where the body is used as evidence in a trial. It's «Carta de recomendación», from the second album: an ironic letter addressed to an ex's new partner, the ex being a fictional character with nicknames of his own.

The letter is full of warnings. And many of them are about the body. Don't trust his blue eyes, they're coloured contact lenses. He has lots of grey hair, and he dyes both his hair and his beard. He has a quote pending to get his teeth fixed. And the age he claims isn't the age he is.

What interests me here is the mechanism. In almost all my catalogue the body is what gets judged unfairly. In this letter, by contrast, the body is the place where the lie hides. The lenses, the dye, the doctored age: it all points the same way. The character's problem isn't having grey hair. It's lying about it. That's why, between one warning and the next, the letter sums it up: all he does is lie, lie and lie.

It's a difference that matters to me. Nobody in my lyrics loses points for getting older. They lose them for pretending.

Not ugly, not bald, not nice

Another song takes those same labels and turns them round in a very different way. «Antisocial», from the third album.

The line is this: «No soy feo, no, ni calvo ni amable» («I'm not ugly, no, nor bald, nor nice»). And it repeats.

That line makes me laugh because it puts two physical traits and one trait of character in the same list. Ugly, bald, nice. As if being nice were as optional as having hair. And what follows turns it all the way round: but in my chest beats a noble heart.

In other words: the person speaking in the song rejects the physical label and rejects the social one too. He isn't ugly or bald, but he isn't going to be pleasant on demand either. What he offers is something else, something that doesn't show in a photo: loyalty to the chosen few.

If in «Buscando el polvo perfecto» the body is the spec sheet that rules you out, in «Antisocial» the body is something you brush aside to talk about what matters. I'm not ugly, fine. But that isn't what I came to tell you.

The muscle man behind the bar

In my lyrics the muscular body appears much more than you might expect. And it almost never comes out of it well.

In «Garrafón de China» one line repeats like an accusation: el cachas de la barra nos vendió garrafón, the muscle man behind the bar sold us rotgut. It's a hangover told from bed, with a splitting head and a stranger lying alongside. And the culprit, according to the lyric, is the ripped barman.

I like that the muscle man here isn't an object of desire, but the one who poured you the bad booze. It's a small revenge on a stereotype that looms large on the scene: the gym body as the prize, the most desirable thing on the night out. In the song, that body served you rotgut. And you'll pay for it in the morning.

In «Mi novio de Albacete» the other side of muscle appears, the perfect-couple side: you so ripped, me tattooed, we were the gay couple of the year. I've written about that line in another piece, so here I'll only point out one thing. The two bodies are presented as an inventory, like a shared profile picture. And the sentence wrapped around them is «you cheated on me». The couple with the perfect bodies was also the couple of the betrayal.

In my songs, muscle guarantees nothing. Neither decent drinks nor fidelity.

A phoenix tattooed on the chest

Tattoos also turn up a lot in my catalogue. And here the body changes its job: it's no longer what gets judged, but what tells the story.

«Tattoo de fénix» opens with a very clear line: I wear a phoenix tattooed on my chest. And after that it's all dance floor: I fly between beats, in the heartbreak club. Turn it up. The floor is shaking. Hold me tight by the waist.

What's interesting is what the drawing means. The phoenix is the bird that rises from its own ashes. Wearing it on your chest, in a dance song after a heartbreak, is wearing a promise written on your skin: I'm going to get back up. The tattoo turns the body into a poster.

And the phoenix isn't a one-off in my catalogue. In «Dientes, dientes» it appears again, now as insult and shield at once: I'm a phoenix and you're a rat. The same image, from the tattooed chest to the mouth that answers back.

In «La vecina cotilla» the tattoo returns, but on someone else's body: he's so handsome and tattooed, I dream of stealing a kiss. Here the tattooed body is pure desire, watched from the window, with the mix of gossip and fantasy that runs through the whole song.

So in my lyrics the tattoo does three things: it's a promise on your own chest, a shield in a fight and desire on the neighbour's skin.

Teeth

There's one part of the body that turns up in my songs often enough to make me smile: teeth.

«Dientes, dientes» takes it all the way to the title. And the chorus explains what they're for: teeth, teeth, that's what gets to them. Teeth, teeth, that's what hurts them. That's how their rage dies. That's how their hate loses its bite.

Here teeth mean a smile. The smile as an answer to envy. Showing your teeth, in the most literal sense: smiling right in front of the people who want to see you sink. There's no better revenge, the song says, because that's what hurts them most.

It strikes me as a very queer idea, if I may. For a long time, people like us were asked not to be noticed, not to draw attention, not to smile too much. Smiling with every tooth in front of someone who despises you is a way of taking up space. And the song turns it into a chorus.

Losing my hair

Hair is another thermometer of the body in my lyrics. Sometimes as an insult, like the «you're bald» of the apps. And sometimes as a wound.

In «La primera drag de Benidorm» there's a run of lines that's almost a scream: here I bleed, here I spit on the floor, here I sell my wounds, here I lose my hair! Here I break mirrors, here I swallow shit!

It's the lyric of someone who has left her skin on a stage. And among all the images of wear and tear comes that one, so physical, so unglamorous: here I lose my hair. It isn't a sophisticated metaphor. It's the body wearing out, literally, in the trade of shining.

And notice that the same run has another mirror in it: here I break mirrors. If in «El espejo de enfrente» the mirror behaves or misbehaves, here it simply shatters. The drag queen's body, exhausted, no longer wants its image handed back.

My body, my luck

There's a very short line in «Tu mendigo» that says a lot about how the body appears in songs of heartbreak.

The lyric speaks to someone who couldn't stand what was good in the other: my joy offended you. My art hurt you, my body, my luck. You wanted to save me and then sweep me away.

My art, my body, my luck. Three things the other envied or resented. And the body sits in the middle, between art and luck, as one more thing that can't be forgiven.

I think it's a very sharp observation about certain relationships. Sometimes the problem isn't that the other person doesn't like your body. It's that they like it too much, and can't bear that it's yours. That you enjoy it. That you feel good in it. And then the body, like joy and like art, becomes something that has to be put out.

What the body still remembers

Not every body in my catalogue belongs to a mirror, a gym or an app. One of them is memory.

The text that comes with «Beat My Post-Traumatic Stress» presents it as a song about surviving what the body still remembers. About walking through fear, anxiety and silence, and turning all of it into rhythm. And it adds that every drum hit is a heartbeat I thought I had lost.

What the body still remembers. I think that's one of the most important phrases in all my texts about the body. Because it says something anyone who has been through something hard already knows: the mind can decide to turn the page, but the body keeps its own calendar. It tenses without permission. It races for no obvious reason. It remembers.

And the answer the text proposes isn't to forget. It's to turn it into rhythm. The body that remembers fear is the same body that, with a drumbeat, dances again.

Skin that doesn't ask permission

I'll end the tour with a body that is celebrated without reservation.

The text of «¡Qué polvo tiene Paco León!» says it isn't mockery but a wink. A tribute to queer beauty, to elegant cheek. And it ends with a sentence I adore: this video celebrates freedom, irony and skin that doesn't ask permission.

Skin that doesn't ask permission. If «El espejo de enfrente» is the body that judges itself, that sentence is the body that has stopped asking for approval. It doesn't need the mirror to behave. It doesn't need to get past the app's filter. It simply is, and it desires, and it lets itself be desired.

The same text sums it up like this: desire can be an art form too.

One body, many judges

If I put all these bodies together, I see a fairly clear pattern. In my songs the body is almost never alone. There's always someone looking at it.

The mirror itself, behaving or misbehaving depending on the day. The likes on the abs photo. The app user handing out labels like fat and bald. The couple who show off their bodies and then cheat. The ex who was hurt by your body. The neighbour watching the tattooed man from her window. The audience before whom the drag queen loses her hair.

And against all those judges, the songs try out different answers. Laughter, when the mirror «behaves». Ridicule, when the judge thinks he's god. Indifference, when the body is brushed aside to talk about loyalty. The tattoo, which writes down a promise. The smile with every tooth showing. The refusal to fake your age. And, in the end, skin that doesn't ask permission.

I don't think any of those answers is the right one. I think they all work, depending on the day. Some days you laugh at the mirror. Some days you break it. And some days, the best ones, you don't look at it at all.

What I don't tell

One honest clarification, as in other pieces. This article isn't about my body. I don't say whether I have tattoos, or how often I go to the gym, or how I get on with my mirror. I don't say it because it isn't in the lyrics, and the lyrics are often written from characters and situations that aren't a literal autobiography.

What I do tell is what's written. And what's written says that the body, on Planet Gayfolk, is a battlefield and a dance floor at the same time. That it's judged a lot and celebrated too little. And that songs are there to even out those scales a bit.

The full lyrics of «El espejo de enfrente» are at gayfolkplanet.com/letras/el-espejo-de-enfrente. Read them on a day when yours is misbehaving.

Frequently asked questions

Which Mike Sain't Louis songs are about the body? Among others, «El espejo de enfrente», «Buscando el polvo perfecto», «Spoiler», «Carta de recomendación», «Antisocial», «Garrafón de China», «Mi novio de Albacete», «Tattoo de fénix», «Dientes, dientes», «La vecina cotilla», «La primera drag de Benidorm» and «Tu mendigo».

What is «El espejo de enfrente» about? About looking in the mirror and judging yourself harshly. The lyric swings between disgust («God, I disgust myself») and the good days («my abs are starting to show»), as if the mirror behaved or misbehaved depending on the day.

What does the phoenix mean in his lyrics? It appears in «Tattoo de fénix», tattooed on a chest in a dance song after a heartbreak, and in «Dientes, dientes» («I'm a phoenix and you're a rat»). It's the image of getting back up again.

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.