In a gay musical you have to be a tiny bit filthy

First rule of a gay musical: you have to be a tiny bit filthy. The chorus says so, and illustrates it on the spot with an example: the boyfriend the protagonist once had, a guy from El Médano.

El Médano, for those who don't know it, is a coastal town in the south of Tenerife famous for its beach and its wind. And the ex in question is portrayed with a few very accurate strokes: he introduced himself to everyone as half Italian, everyone took him for a really nice guy and, in the end, he turned out to be a failure. Later the lyrics add that he wasn't thirty but fifty-something, that all his exes agreed on the same thing and that they warned: watch out for that one. Dark-haired, short, bearded. A Mr Nobody, a Pinocchio.

I enjoy how the song mixes two things that at first have nothing to do with each other: personal spite and the rules of the musical genre. Second rule: you have to be like the protagonist, rather vulgar, outlandish, visionary, revolutionary, extraordinary and, of course, very necessary. That chain of adjectives ending in -aria in Spanish is almost a tap-dance number made of words. Third rule: you can't get scared, because then you won't enjoy it.

And that's the point of it all. A gay musical is exaggerated, shameless, sometimes rude and always theatrical. If you get scandalised, you miss out. The same goes for the song, which closes with a couple of pretty crude lines about what that Pinocchio didn't do in bed, delivered with the brass neck of a showgirl in the final number.

It has the soul of a stage. I picture feathers, an illuminated staircase and a chorus of ex-boyfriends pointing at the one from El Médano as the curtain falls.

Put it on when you feel like laughing at a love that went sour. Or when you've been told you're too much. In a gay musical you're never too much.

The full lyrics are below. Listen on Spotify