Priests, rosaries and fallen angels: the sacred in my lyrics

«Hoy es mi vuelta a los infiernoooooooos.»

"Today I'm going back to hellllllll". Just like that, with nine o's in the Spanish, like riding down an escalator that never ends. And right underneath, the detail that explains everything: «Después de cuatro años como invitado Vip en el cielo», "After four years as a VIP guest in heaven". Four years of gold wristband, celestial free bar, a private booth overlooking the clouds. And one day they take the wristband off you, show you the door and send you back down, to the same old dance floor, with the same old music and the same bouncer looking you up and down.

That heaven, of course, isn't the one from the catechism. It's a relationship. And that hell has no cauldrons: it has a sauna, trendy liqueurs and a lad crying through the streets of Madrid who, if you ask him, will tell you he's been chopping onions.

Going back over my lyrics, the amount of sacristy vocabulary jumps out at you. Heaven, hell, priest, Mass, church, rosary, fallen angel, last rites, God in small letters and capitals, the Good Samaritan. And it made me laugh, because if you asked me whether I write religious songs I'd say not on your life. But Spanish comes like this from the factory. You can't say goodbye, or swear, or complain, or curse without a saint popping out from some corner. I just let them out. And then I change their frocks.

VIP guest in heaven

I'll start with «Un invitado VIP cortando cebolla», "A VIP guest chopping onions", because it's the song where heaven and hell are most on display, and also because it's the one that best explains what I do with them.

In that lyric, heaven is the time with someone. Four years. And hell is what comes after, when that someone leaves: the loneliness, the anxiety, the tears the lyric stretches until they're no longer a word but a noise. So far, nothing any bolero hasn't said. What I like is the detail of the pass. He wasn't a resident of heaven. He was a guest. VIP, granted, but a guest. Someone who never had the keys.

That's how a lot of break-ups feel. You discover the place you were living wasn't yours. That you were on the list. And lists get changed.

Then comes the other irony, and I didn't go looking for this one, I found it while writing. The song's hell has a venue with a proper name, and the name is Paradise. «Y hoy he llegado de nuevo borracho a la Sauna Paraíso», "And today I've turned up drunk again at the Sauna Paraíso". The place of the descent is named after the place of the ascent. That's how twisted the emotional map of a bad night is. You go to paradise to forget you've been thrown out of heaven, and you come out lower than you went in.

I don't attach a moral. Neither does the song. All it does is put the protagonist crying in the street and give him a kitchen excuse. And that excuse, the onion, is the most human thing in the whole lyric: the little lie you tell so the neighbours don't ask.

Married in church

The church turns up in my songs almost always as a façade. As the place people go to be seen.

In «El anillo de casado», "The wedding ring", the protagonist falls for a man who has already been up the aisle. And the lyric says it with a precision I still find cruel: «Y por lo iglesia se ha casado, con su mujer de blanco puro y cuatrocientos invitados», "And he got married in church, with his wife in pure white and four hundred guests". Four hundred. That's not a wedding, it's a blockbuster. It's an announcement to the whole county that this gentleman is exactly as God intended.

And in the next line, the other side: «Y nosotros por Madrid de discretos buscando hostales que no tengan colgado en el telefonillo el cartel de / completos», "And us going round Madrid on the quiet, looking for guesthouses without a 'no vacancies' sign / hanging on the entryphone". From an altar with four hundred people to the entryphone of a guesthouse with no free rooms. The church and the guesthouse. What gets shown and what gets hidden, in two lines in a row.

I didn't write that song to mock anyone who marries in church. Let everyone marry wherever they like. I wrote it because the church, in that story, works as a certificate. A piece of paper saying: this man is heterosexual, here are the photos, here's the white dress. And that paper, like so many certificates, doesn't tell the truth. The lyric calls it, with all the scorn I can squeeze into two words, «su supuesta / heterosexualidad», "his supposed / heterosexuality".

The sacred as an alibi. That interests me far more than the sacred as faith.

Throwing the priest out of the house

There's one song where the priest appears in person, in the flesh, with his stole and his holy oil. And he doesn't come off well.

In «Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto», "Nobody will talk about me when I'm dead", I imagine my own end, and on the guest list, after the friends you can count on one hand and the blood relatives, he arrives: «El cura que quiere dar la extremaunción», "The priest who wants to give the last rites". Wants to. Nobody asked him. He comes to offer himself, like the insurance salesman who turns up at the worst possible moment.

And the lyric won't let him. I take my leave «a malas, con la iglesia», "on bad terms with the church", and throw him out of the house with accusations I won't repeat here, because they're already in the lyric, and on a blog they sound harsher than in a song. What matters is the gesture. At the last moment, when everyone is supposed to make peace with everything, the protagonist of that song says no. Not even on his deathbed.

It isn't a song about religion. It's a song about the loneliness of a funeral, about how few people will come, about the ones who'll say "well, you know, he had his temper". But the priest is there because at a Spanish funeral there's always a priest, even if nobody invited him. And it seemed honest to me that the protagonist, who's already been left with hardly anyone, should allow himself the luxury of throwing out the only one who came uncalled.

If I laugh at that scene it's because it's so very Spanish. Even to die you have to negotiate with someone from the parish.

I ended up at Mass with a reggaeton star

It's not all last-rites drama. Sometimes the sacred turns up as a comic accident, like being seated at the wrong table at a wedding.

In «Croquetas en el crucero», "Croquettes on the cruise", the protagonist signs up for a Mediterranean cruise with very specific expectations. The lyric doesn't beat about the bush: «quería una orgía con falda de cuero», "I wanted an orgy in a leather skirt". And the result is this: «y acabé en misa con un reggaetonero», "and I ended up at Mass with a reggaeton star". From leather to Mass. From a plan of debauchery to a wooden pew, with a bloke in a baseball cap beside him who probably didn't know how he'd got there either.

That line still makes me laugh on my own. Because that's what holidays are like: you plan one thing and something else happens, and what happens is always more ridiculous. And Mass, in that context, is the ultimate symbol of the failed plan. It's the opposite of what you came looking for.

And as if that weren't enough, a few lines later: «me liaron con un cura y su jardinero», "they got me tangled up with a priest and his gardener". Which I won't explain. Let everyone picture it however they like. All I'll say is that on my invented cruise even the clergy have a private life, and a gardener on a ship is suspicious in itself.

I like the sacred entering my songs like this, on the rebound, without solemnity. A Mass that catches you by surprise. A priest at a party. If religion spent centuries frowning at queers, now it's its turn to appear in a camp song with chonis, Spain's gobby girls in hoop earrings, by the pool and sardines in the minibar.

May God keep you in His glory

There's a form of the sacred I use all the time and that hardly shows: the formulas. The set phrases with God inside that everyone says without thinking.

In «La ley de la exageración», "The law of exaggeration", after dishing out a hiding to two narcissists, the farewell is a village death notice: «Que dios os tenga en su gloria», "May God keep you in His glory". And right after, an «¡Adiós!» which, if you think about it, is religious too. A-Dios. To God. You say it a hundred times a day and never notice you're commending someone to heaven.

Using a funeral phrase to see off two living people has a very particular charm. It's like saying: as far as I'm concerned you're dead, I've held your wake, laid flowers, said my prayers. That's it. No need to talk about you any more. Divine glory as a recycling bin.

In «De mito a vómito», "From myth to vomit", the same thing happens, in an even shorter version. «Con Dios / ¡y que te aguante tu madre!», "Go with God / and let your mother put up with you!" Con Dios. Two words. It's how the old ladies at the market say goodbye when you buy something from them, fondly and in a hurry. And I give it to an ex just before handing him back to his mother. The kindly formula and the sledgehammer, side by side.

I nearly always do this without noticing. Religious phrases are so worn that they no longer weigh anything. And that's precisely why I can use them to see someone off without it sounding like a sermon. They're like a paper tissue: nobody keeps one.

And they have another advantage: everyone gets them straight away. I don't need to explain the tone. If I write "may God keep you in His glory", the listener already knows I'm not praying for anyone. They know it's a door being shut with wake-room manners, coat on and no looking back. The formula does the gesture's job. And in a song, where I can't pull a face or raise an eyebrow, words that come with the gesture included are a gift.

I'm God and you're worn out

There's a god in my lyrics more frightening than any priest. The god of the apps.

In «Buscando el polvo perfecto», "Looking for the perfect shag", the lyric gets inside the head of the kind of user everyone has come across on Grindr, the one who thinks he's the judge of other people's bodies: «Eres viejo y poco dotado, / Yo soy dios y tú estás desgastado», "You're old and poorly endowed, / I'm God and you're worn out". That "I'm God" isn't blasphemy. It's worse. It's the exact description of how someone feels when he can block another man with one finger. A little god, a screen god, handing out heavens and hells according to the profile picture.

I wanted to put those words in the mouth of a hateful character because that's how you see how ridiculous the throne is. The app god is a lad with a gym selfie. His paradise is a "hi" that gets a reply. His hell, a "seen".

And then, at the end of the song, the lyric does what I nearly always do when something gets too much for me: it invents a planet. A place where «No hay grinder ni aplicaciones», "There's no Grindr and no apps", where nobody plays God and nobody is worn out. It's the closest thing to a paradise I've ever written, and it has no clouds, no harps, no VIP wristbands. It has something much rarer: people who don't treat each other as objects.

If there's anything sacred in my songs, maybe that's it.

Praying on my knees in Madrid's El Rosario

In «La música me está salvando», "Music is saving me", there's a list of things that don't work. Psychologists, friends, brothers, psychiatrists, doctors, boyfriends, paediatricians, vets, a TV astrologer. And in the middle of all that, prayer: «rezar de rodillas en Madrid El Rosario», "praying on my knees in Madrid's El Rosario". Just like that, with its street and its neighbourhood. Not praying in the abstract. Praying in a specific spot in my city, on your knees, with all the ache that involves.

And that doesn't work either. It's on the list of things that don't save you, alongside total fasts and honest politicians. What saves you is something else, and the song shouts it out: music. And the lovely thing is that, to say so, the lyric goes back to church words. «La música me ha llevado al cieloooooooooooooooooo», "Music has taken me to heavennnnnnnn". Heaven again, with eighteen o's this time. The ascent again.

That contradiction tickles me. Prayer doesn't take me to heaven and music does, but to say so I have to use the vocabulary of prayer. It's as if the language won't let me out of the parish even to escape from it.

A fallen angel, a Good Samaritan

There are two biblical figures who appear in passing and whom I love because I use them back to front.

In «Ni un pimiento», "Not a single pepper", the comfort offered to a friend comes with two Sunday-school titles: «Eres un ángel caído un buen samaritano», "You're a fallen angel, a Good Samaritan". The fallen angel, traditionally the baddie, is the good one here: the one who fell because he was pushed. And the Good Samaritan, who in the parable helps the wounded man by the road, turns here into the mug who scoops an ex off the floor like rescuing a trampled pepper. The lyric laughs at the Samaritan. It tells him: helping is all very nice, but look who you've picked up.

That happens a lot with me. I take the figure of goodness I was taught as an example and turn it round so you can see its silly side. Because goodness without judgement has its own hell too. Helping someone who doesn't want to be helped. Picking up what others threw away for a reason. Looking after someone who'll walk all over you the moment he's back on his feet.

That line isn't aimed at any believer. It's aimed at the Good Samaritan many of us carry inside, who picks up what he shouldn't.

I fell into temptation

There's a line from the Lord's Prayer hidden in a song about a household appliance. Or nearly.

In «3 años de garantía», "3-year guarantee", the protagonist sees an advert on telly for a lad who's «muy mono moreno», "dark and very cute", and does what anyone would do in the small hours with a card to hand: «Caí en la tentación», "I fell into temptation". With the exact words of the prayer many of us learnt by heart before we knew what it meant. "Lead us not into temptation." Well, I fell. And paid cash on delivery.

What follows is a parody of customer service. A one-month trial, the repair shop, the complaints form, the Community of Madrid consumer office with its endless reference number. And in the middle of it all, another Holy Week word: «Y a los tres años empezó mi calvario», "And after three years my Calvary began". Calvary. The hill where Christ was crucified, turned into the period after the guarantee runs out on a mail-order boyfriend.

I love that mixture because it's exactly how people talk. Nobody thinks of Golgotha when they say sorting out their dole claim was a calvario. The word has been worn down so much it just means "what a palaver". And in a song about buying a boyfriend the way you'd buy a washing machine, having the two most solemn words be temptation and Calvary seems to me the perfect joke. The sacred reduced to a retail guarantee.

The one who plays the saint at church

And of course there's the fake saint. He had to make an appearance.

In «Si Don AussieBum hablase», "If Mr AussieBum could talk", the lyric imagines that a pair of stolen swimming trunks could speak and tell everything they've seen. And the list of people who'd be exposed is very long: husbands, partners, acquaintances, uncles, aunts, nephews, the cousin, «el que te ponía bastante», "the one you rather fancied", and, in pride of place, «el que va de santo en la iglesia», "the one who plays the saint at church".

Everyone knows that character. The one in the front row at Mass, the one criticising everybody at the door on the way out, the one who talks about values at Christmas lunch. And who then, according to the trunks, leads a rather less edifying life. I don't name him because there's no need. Every village and every neighbourhood has one.

What interests me about the fake saint isn't the hypocrisy itself, which has been done to death. It's that in my song the one who gives him away is a piece of swimwear. Not a priest, not a judge, not a journalist. A pair of trunks. The most frivolous thing in the wardrobe is the only reliable witness. And in a catalogue that laughs at solemnity, that strikes me as bargain-bin poetic justice.

Waking up in hell

And I go back to hell, where I started, because there's a song in which hell isn't the night or the sauna. It's memory.

In «Me rindo», "I give up", the lyric says: «Para mí esto es como haber despertado en el infierno», "For me this is like waking up in hell". And what comes next isn't flames. It's good memories: trips to the village, walking the dogs, Christmases, a "come here, don't cry". Hell is discovering that all of that could have been fake. That the memories holding you up were «tomas falsas de La que se avecina o de Caso cerrado», "outtakes from La que se avecina or Caso cerrado", a Spanish sitcom and a courtroom TV show.

That's the most modern hell I know. Not a punishment for what you did. Suspicion about what you lived. No priest explains it at catechism and no bolero tells it well, so the lyric tells it with TV references, the language we've all got to hand.

Why so many saints

You might think that, with all these priests and Masses, I have a score to settle with religion. It's not that. Or not entirely, since I won't pretend to be a saint either, pardon the pun.

What I have is a language. And in this language the sacred is tucked into every corner. You say goodbye with God. You swear on your dead. You say something is hell or someone is an angel. You complain with a «madre mía», "mother of mine", which comes from the Virgin. And when you want to exaggerate, which is my thing, religious vocabulary is the biggest there is: there's nothing above heaven and nothing below hell. It's the maximum scale of drama.

So I use it. I give heaven a VIP wristband, paradise the name of a sauna, the Mass a reggaeton star, Calvary a complaints form and the Good Samaritan some out-of-date peppers. I strip away the solemnity and keep the size. The sacred, in my lyrics, is like an inherited sequinned dress: enormous, heavy with beading, far too serious for the occasion. And that's exactly why I wear it for a night out.

If you want to hunt down all these priests, rosaries and angels yourself, they're in the lyrics archive. And the one with the VIP pass, the nine o's, is there in full on gayfolkplanet.com, onion and all.

Amen. Or as the lyric would put it: adiós.

Frequently asked questions

Are Mike Sain't Louis's songs religious? No. They use a lot of religious vocabulary (heaven, hell, priest, Mass, church, rosary), but as metaphor, as everyday Spanish set phrases or as comic scenes. They're neither songs of faith nor songs against anyone's faith.

What is «Un invitado VIP cortando cebolla» about? Going back to nightlife after a four-year relationship, told as a fall from heaven to hell, with tears the protagonist hides by saying he's been chopping onions. It's on «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK». The lyrics are Mike's; the music and the performances are made with artificial intelligence tools, which is why he calls himself the first AI songwriter.

In which song is the priest thrown out of the house? «Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto», in which the protagonist imagines his own funeral and refuses the last rites.