Back to the mirror: «El espejo de enfrente» and the judge whose mood changes every morning

A shirtless man sits with his back to us on some rocks, facing the sea. He holds his head in both hands, elbows out, like someone who has just had bad news or is trying to make his brain stop spinning. There are dark tattoos on his shoulders and a thin chain around his neck. In front of him, the water crashes against the rocks under a stormy sky, and in the distance the yellow lights of a seaside town glow at nightfall. At the bottom, in pink neon lettering, the title.

That’s the cover of «El espejo de enfrente», «The mirror opposite», and the first thing that strikes me is what’s missing. A song with that title, and there’s no mirror in the picture. A song about being sick of seeing your own face, and there’s no face on the cover. The man has his back turned. He’s done exactly what the lyrics can’t manage: turn around.

The song is on «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk», the first album of the trilogy, and it’s number 269 in the full list of singles. Its page on the blog already talks about the humour with which the lyrics handle self-esteem and the cult of the body. Here I want to look at the mirror as what it is in the song: a judge. One whose mood changes every morning, and to whom, without realising it, we hand an enormous amount of power.

Before going on, a note. There’s a line towards the end that can be read in a very dark way. If, reading this, you recognise yourself in that reading, if you’re thinking of hurting yourself, talk to someone. In Spain there’s 024, free and available at any hour. If there’s immediate danger, 112. If you’re outside Spain, call your local emergency number.

A song that starts in a Gothic novel

The first verse opens on a very solemn set: the half-light of the early hours, the moon hiding a pale shadow, someone looking in the mirror and not living in the present. If you stopped there, you’d expect a nineteenth-century Romantic poem.

And then comes a comparison that breaks it all: «siento que mi cabeza es un globo sonda», «I feel my head is a weather balloon». The song’s page already calls it one of the lyrics’ best comparisons, and I can see why. A weather balloon is released to measure conditions in the upper atmosphere. It rises and rises, swelling as the pressure drops, and in the end it bursts.

It’s a perfect image for what happens to your head in front of the mirror. It starts with a small thought, I don’t like how my skin looks, and it rises, and swells, and turns into another, and another, until your head is about to explode. All because of a reflection.

The mirror’s hour

The song takes place in the early hours, and I think that’s a very good choice. The small hours are the worst time to look at yourself. You’ve slept badly or not at all, your face is puffy, the light is dim or, worse, it’s the harsh white bathroom light switched on all of a sudden.

The small hours are also when the mind is least protected. There’s no noise, no people, nothing to distract you. Everything that stays in a corner during the day comes out for a walk. If you plant yourself in front of a mirror at that time, the verdict is going to be brutal.

There’s almost practical advice to be drawn from the lyrics here: don’t judge yourself in the small hours. Not your face, not your body, not your life. Wait for the sun to come up. Almost everything looks different at eleven in the morning with a coffee in your hand.

Not living in the present

There’s a line in the first verse that goes by quickly and strikes me as very sharp: I look in the mirror and I’m not living in the present. What does the mirror have to do with the present?

A lot. When you examine yourself in the mirror, you’re hardly ever looking at what’s there. You’re comparing. With how you were five years ago. With how you’d like to be. With a photo of someone you saw on your phone yesterday. With the body you think you ought to have. The real reflection, today’s, you barely see. All those other images cover it up.

That’s why the lyrics say they’re not living in the present. Looked at like that, the mirror pulls you out of the moment and into a contest with ghosts. And you always lose that contest, because ghosts don’t age, don’t sleep badly and don’t have the bathroom light against them.

The mirror as judge

What these lyrics do, from start to finish, is treat the mirror as if it were someone. Not an object you look into, but a person who looks at you and has opinions. This damn mirror opposite, they call it. The way you’d talk about an annoying neighbour or an unbearable colleague.

I think that’s a very sharp intuition. Many people experience their relationship with the mirror exactly like that. They don’t go to look at themselves; they go to be examined. And the mirror hands down a verdict: today you pass, today you fail. The funny thing is that the judge isn’t the mirror. The judge is inside your head. The mirror just lends it a face.

Every reflection, a jeer

In the second verse, every reflection brings a jeer. It’s the same idea of the judge, but crueller. The mirror no longer gives its opinion: it laughs. And the eyes are tired from so much looking.

That part really interests me, because it describes something that seems contradictory. If the mirror makes you feel so bad, why do you keep looking? And the answer is that looking becomes a compulsion. You check. You check again. You turn sideways, face on, change the light. You look for the angle that will confirm you’re fine, and you almost never find it.

Anyone who has been through that knows how exhausting it is. Eyes tired from so much looking aren’t poetic exaggeration. It’s what happens when you spend half an hour in front of the bathroom mirror trying to convince yourself of something.

Looking for somewhere to escape

The same verse ends with the mind fading into silence, looking for a breather, a place to escape from the mirror. It’s the wish not to have to see yourself. To be able to spend a while without a face.

And here I go back to the cover, because I think it’s exactly that place. The sea, the rocks, the town far away. A place with no mirrors, where the only thing that reflects is the rough water, and rough water gives back no clear image. The man in the photo has gone somewhere nothing can judge him. And still he holds his head. Because the judge, as I said, was never in the mirror.

The unfiltered chorus

The chorus is one of the most direct in the whole catalogue. Ay, qué asco me doy, I disgust myself. I’m sick of seeing my face in the mirror opposite, with a much stronger adjective in the middle. And then a repeated line: soy tan cruel, tan cruel, I’m so cruel, so cruel.

What I value about this chorus is that it says out loud what a lot of people think in silence. Self-disgust is an emotion that’s rarely talked about. It’s embarrassing to admit. And the song just lets it out, no frills, with a swear word in the middle.

But the most interesting part comes after: I’m so cruel. Who is cruel? It can be read two ways. The mirror is cruel to me. Or I’m cruel to myself. And the lyrics, I think, point to the second. The cruelty doesn’t belong to the glass. It belongs to whoever looks at themselves with those eyes.

Noticing your own cruelty

That line, I’m so cruel, is for me the most important in the song. Because it’s the moment when the person insulting themselves realises they’re doing it.

That’s no small thing. Self-criticism often runs on autopilot, like background noise that never gets questioned. You tell yourself horrible things and they feel like truths. Realising that what you’re telling yourself is cruelty, not information, is the first step towards stopping.

There’s a very simple test that often gets recommended: would you say that to a friend? If a friend looked in the mirror and you told them you disgust me, I’m sick of seeing your face, it would be unforgivable. So the same goes when you say it to yourself.

The mirror has its days

The bridge is the funniest part, and the song’s page already describes it well: it turns out the mirror has its days. There are days when it behaves, «ya se me marcan las abdominales», «my abs are finally showing», you’re radiant. And there are days when it behaves terribly.

What I find most revealing is the expression portarse bien, to behave. As if the mirror decided. As if the image depended on its mood and not on the light, on sleep, on what you ate yesterday or on how you feel inside. And that says a lot about how unreliable this judge is. A judge who acquits you one day and convicts you the next, without you having changed a thing.

Because that’s what happens. Your body doesn’t change from one day to the next. What changes is how you look at it. Abs don’t appear and vanish in twenty-four hours. What appears and vanishes is your patience with yourself.

Abs as the yardstick

It really amuses me that, out of everything the mirror could get right, the lyrics choose abs. They don’t say I look well today, or today I like my smile. They say my abs are showing.

It’s very recognisable, especially on the gay scene, where a sculpted body is almost a currency. Photos on the apps, at the beach, at the gym. The six-pack as proof that you look after yourself, that you’re worth something, that you’re desirable. The song’s page already talks about this and pokes a bit of fun at it, starting with the person who wrote it.

What I want to add is that this yardstick is a trap. If your worth depends on your abs showing, your worth is going to rise and fall with the bathroom light. And nobody deserves to live like that.

Vital signs

In the other half of the bridge, when the mirror behaves terribly, the lyrics say something hugely exaggerated: «no siento mis constantes vitales», «I can’t feel my vital signs». It’s a very Planeta Gayfolk kind of hyperbole, almost soap opera. I look so bad I’m dying.

It’s how we talk when something feels unbearable: I could die of embarrassment, I want to die, I’m dead. Expressions we use every day without thinking about what they say. And in a song as full of glitter as the ones on this planet, an exaggeration like that works almost as a wink: we know it’s not meant literally.

What’s more, the contrast with the other half of the bridge is brilliant. One day you’re radiant and the next you’re clinically dead. No middle ground. And that lack of middle ground says a lot about the mirror judge, who only knows how to give extreme marks. Top grade or fail. Never a calm pass.

But I also want to take it seriously for a second, because right after it comes another line.

I think that’s enough

The bridge ends with a phrase: «creo que ya es suficiente», «I think that’s enough». And here I want to stop and tread carefully.

It can be read in a bright way: enough of looking at myself, enough of torturing myself, I’m off. That’s the reading I prefer, the one about someone finally turning around, like the man on the cover. Enough. I’m not looking any more.

But it can also be read in a very dark way, especially right after talking about not feeling your vital signs. And I don’t want to pretend that reading doesn’t exist. If you read it like that, because that’s how you feel, please talk to someone. A person you trust, your doctor, or call 024 in Spain. You don’t need to be at the edge to call. If you’re outside Spain, call your local emergency number.

The cover, again

Now I think it’s clearer why the cover has no mirror and no face. It’s the answer to the song. It’s what happens when, after being so sick of seeing yourself, you decide to stop looking.

Turning your back on the mirror isn’t turning your back on yourself. It’s no longer looking to a piece of glass for the answer to whether you’re worth anything. The man on the cover can’t see himself. And yet there he is, whole, with his back, his tattoos, his body unjudged. We see him, and we’re not asking anything of him.

And what we see isn’t an advert body. It’s an ordinary body, with its marks and its ink, sitting on a rock. The mirror would have found a thousand flaws. The sea doesn’t find a single one.

Looking with different eyes

I’m not a psychologist and I’m not going to hand out recipes, but there are some ideas that come up a lot when people talk about body image, and I think they’re worth sharing.

One is to cut down the examination time. Look in the mirror to do your hair, to check there’s nothing in your teeth, to see your shirt is straight. And that’s it. Don’t turn every trip to the bathroom into a courtroom.

Another is to pay attention to what your body does and not just how it looks. The legs that carry you, the arms that hug, the lungs that breathe. It sounds corny, but it changes the question: from how do I look to what does it let me do.

And the most important: if your relationship with the mirror has become a constant source of suffering, if you eat or stop eating because of what you see, if you don’t leave the house because you can’t stand yourself, that deserves professional help. There are specialists in body image and in eating disorders. It isn’t silly and it isn’t vanity. It’s health.

Compliments that don’t get through

There’s something the song doesn’t say, but which I think lies behind all of it: when the mirror is behaving terribly, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. A friend can tell you you look gorgeous, your partner can tell you they adore you, someone can send you a lovely message. And it doesn’t get through.

It’s one of the most frustrating things about self-disgust. It can’t be cured from the outside. Compliments bounce off, because the inner judge has more authority than anyone else’s opinion. Worse: sometimes a compliment makes things worse, because you think they’re saying it out of pity or that they’re not seeing you properly.

That’s why it makes so much sense for the song to focus on the relationship with the mirror and not on what others say. That’s where the work is. In changing how you look at yourself. And that, hard as it is, can be learned.

Cruel to yourself, in the plural

I like that this song is written in the first person with its shame so openly on show, because that makes it shareable. Anyone who listens and recognises themselves isn’t alone. There’s someone else who looks in the mirror and can’t stand it. And who has managed to laugh at it a little.

That humour has a purpose. It doesn’t make light of what you feel, but it makes it manageable. If you can laugh at your mirror having its days, behaving one day and being awful the next, you’ve already taken a step out of the trap. You’ve taken away some of its authority.

Between gatekeepers and supermarkets

In the list of singles, «El espejo de enfrente» comes right after «Gatekeeping» and right before «El productor de Madonna no compra en Mercadona», «Madonna’s producer doesn’t shop at Mercadona». I find the neighbourhood funny: first a song about whoever decides who gets in and who doesn’t, then this one about the mirror judge, and then one that sounds like celebrity gossip.

The first two, if you think about it, are about the same thing from two sides. In one, the gatekeeper is outside. In this one, it’s inside. And the third is a good way to change the subject and have a laugh.

Music as a place to breathe

The lyrics talk about looking for a breather, a place to escape. For many people, that place is music. I talk about it on the page for «La música me está salvando», «music is saving me»: putting a song on at full blast can be a way of getting out of your head for a while.

And this song has something of that, even though it’s about the problem itself. Listening to it and recognising yourself is a way of looking at the mirror from outside, like watching a scene on TV. You’re no longer in it. You’re watching it. And from there you judge less.

For the morning you can’t stand yourself

«El espejo de enfrente» is for those mornings. For when you look and don’t like anything, when your head swells like a weather balloon, when the mirror has decided to behave terribly.

And it’s there to remind you that the mirror isn’t a reliable judge. Tomorrow it will tell you something else. And the best answer, sometimes, is the one on the cover: turn around, look at the sea and let the glass go on talking to itself.

As a lyricist, I enjoy having fitted a weather balloon, a set of abs and some vital signs into the same song. I call myself «the first AI songwriter» because I make the music and vocals with artificial intelligence, but these lyrics are about something very flesh and blood. It’s free in downloads.

Frequently asked questions

Which album is «El espejo de enfrente» on? On «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk», the first album in Mike Sain't Louis’s GAYFOLK trilogy. It’s number 269 in the full list of singles.

What is «El espejo de enfrente» about? About self-criticism in front of the mirror: self-disgust, cruelty towards your own image and a mirror that behaves well one day and terribly the next.

What’s on the cover? A shirtless man, seen from behind with his hands on his head, sitting on rocks facing the sea at nightfall, with the title in pink neon.

Where can I get help if I recognise myself in the lyrics? In Spain, call 024, free and available at any hour; if there’s immediate danger, call 112. If you’re outside Spain, call your local emergency number. For problems with body image or eating, you can also see a health professional.

Who made the song? The lyrics are by Mike Sain't Louis, lyricist, composer and music producer from Madrid. The music and vocals were made with artificial intelligence tools.