«Today it's time»: an afternoon of records, the Spanish songwriter tradition and listening to Ismael Serrano as self-care

Some phrases need nothing else to tell a whole afternoon. «Hoy toca» is one of them. In Spanish it means something like "today it's time for", and we say it about the laundry, the dentist, Sunday lunch at the in-laws', the gym you've been dodging for three weeks. It's a diary expression, a small duty, a note stuck on the fridge. And yet, when you put it in front of a musician's name, it changes colour. «Hoy toca escuchar a Ismael Serrano» stops sounding like a chore and starts sounding like a date. A date with someone who isn't coming to your house, but who'll be there the moment you press play.

Before going on, an honest warning. The lyrics of this song haven't been published yet. On gayfolkplanet.com the page says "coming soon", and in this post I'm not going to make up a single line. What I do have is what anyone can see and hear: the title, the cover, the official video, its place on the singles list and the family of songs it lives in. That's enough to think for a while. Sometimes a song's title is both the first line of the lyrics and the last word of the record, and this is one of those.

A title that is a diary

I like titles that sound like something said in a kitchen. Not like a poem, not like a protest banner, but like an everyday sentence. «Hoy toca» has that humility. It doesn't promise a revelation. It doesn't say "today I need", or "today this saves me", or "today I fall apart". It says something much more modest and, for that reason, much truer: today is the day for this. Like saying today it's fish, today it's the windows, today it's time to call Mum.

The curious thing about the expression is that it carries a small surrender inside it. When you say something «toca», you admit you haven't completely chosen it. It's fallen to you, the way a lottery prize falls to you or a night shift does. There's an outside force, a calendar, a mood, deciding for you. Applied to music, that says a lot. There are days when you don't choose the record: the record chooses you. You open the app thinking about something else and your hand goes on its own to the same artist as always, the one who kept you company in another period of your life, the one who knows exactly where it hurts.

I think about that gesture and it strikes me as one of the most intimate there is. Nobody sees what you choose to listen to when you're alone. No audience, no posing, no shared playlist. It's a private act, almost a confession. If someone could see your listening history on a Tuesday night, they'd know more about you than your best friend does. That's why the title works: it turns into a song that invisible moment when you decide what music you need.

The sepia cover

The single's cover matches that tone. It looks like an old photograph, worn at the edges, in sepia tones and with the dust of time on it. In the middle there's a boy sitting in a dry field, dressed in black with ruffles and embroidery, a Spanish guitar resting between his legs. He looks down. He's not posing for anyone. He seems to be deciding what to play, or remembering something he can no longer hear without it hurting.

There are three things in that image that interest me a lot. The first is the dry field. It isn't a stage, a bar or a concert hall. It's dry farmland, harvested cereal land, that landscape of the central Spanish plateau so often painted as empty and actually full of silence. The second is the clothes. Black with ruffles, an outfit that could come from a flamenco tablao, a procession or a fashion shoot. It has something of flamenco and something of mourning, something of folklore and something of the catwalk. The third is the Spanish guitar, the classic one, the six nylon strings found in almost every home in this country even if nobody's played it since Grandad's military service.

Together, those three things form a crossroads I know very well. Copla and songwriting. Ruffles and corduroy. Grief told with flowers and grief told with arguments. It's exactly the crossroads where PLANETA GAYFOLK lives, a place with room at once for the peineta comb and the protest song, for glitter and the underlined paperback.

And then there's the sepia. Sepia is the colour of what's already happened. When a photo comes out in sepia, it's telling you to look back. On a cover that carries in its title the name of a musician who started releasing records in the nineties, that tone isn't random: it's the memory of a generation that learned to love and unlove with songwriter albums in their Walkman.

Who Ismael Serrano is

For anyone who doesn't know him, a few public facts. Ismael Serrano was born in Madrid on 9 March 1974, in the Vallecas neighbourhood. He studied Physics at the Complutense University and started playing in the early nineties on the circuit of Madrid cafés where much of the city's songwriting tradition has been cooked: Libertad 8, the Galileo, Nuevos Juglares. He signed with PolyGram and in 1997 released his first album, «Atrapados en azul», which went platinum in Spain and opened the doors of Latin America for him.

From that debut came tracks that a huge number of people my age know by heart: «Papá cuéntame otra vez», «Vértigo», «Amo tanto la vida». Also «Caperucita», released as a single in 1998, which plays an important role in another of my songs, as I'll explain later. And a detail that makes me smile every time I read it: on that same first album there's a track called «Yo quiero ser muy promiscuo» (I want to be very promiscuous). A lad in his early twenties, guitar in hand, giving that title to a track on his debut in the Spain of 1997. There's a touch of involuntary camp there, and I say it with all the affection in the world.

His music draws on writers such as Joaquín Sabina, Joan Manuel Serrat and Silvio Rodríguez, and on poets such as Luis García Montero and Mario Benedetti. He mixes the political with the everyday, love with memory, humour with sadness. That mix, precisely, is what makes so many people put him on during strange days.

The songwriter tradition as a place to return to

In Spain, «canción de autor», the songwriter tradition, has a history that goes far beyond a style. It's a way of being in the world. It was born, to a large extent, as protest music in the years of the dictatorship, when a guitar and a well-placed line could say what the newspapers couldn't. Later, with democracy, it became something else: a place to go and think. To think about what happened, about what's happening to us, about the love that left and the neighbourhood that changed.

What interests me most in that tradition isn't the big anthem songs but the small ones. The ones that tell a conversation in a bar, a letter that was never sent, a father telling his son what everything used to be like. They're songs that don't ask you to dance or shout. They ask you to sit down. And in a world that never stops asking you to do things, someone asking you to sit down is almost a gift.

That's why I understand so well the idea that listening to a writer like that is something that «toca». It isn't background music. It's foreground music, the kind that demands you turn down the volume on everything else. And there are days when that's exactly what you need: to be made to stop.

I present myself as the first AI songwriter, and I know that label has a whiff of provocation. I don't play guitar in a café in Lavapiés or climb onto a stage. I write the lyrics, compose and produce, and the music and performances are generated with artificial intelligence. But when I write, the tradition I have in my head is that one: people who told their own lives and the life of their street with the same seriousness. The fact that one of my songs carries in its title the name of one of the best-known writers in that tradition says a lot about where I feel at home.

Choosing a record to match your mood

There's a part of this title that has to do with something psychology has been studying for years: using music to regulate how we feel. The Finnish researcher Suvi Saarikallio, together with Jaakko Erkkilä, published a study in 2007 in the journal Psychology of Music on how teenagers use music to manage their mood. They found very different strategies: music to distract yourself, to release anger, to entertain yourself, to relive memories, to reflect on what you feel, to find comfort.

What fascinates me about that list is that almost nobody thinks about it consciously, yet we all apply it. There are records for cleaning the house, records for a good cry, records for getting angry with dignity. There are artists you go back to the way you go back to your grandparents' house: knowing where every piece of furniture is. I wrote about that routine music, the music of the sink and the broom, in the post on songs for washing the dishes. This is the other end: music you choose not to accompany the chore, but so that the chore is you.

«Hoy toca» sounds like that, like recognising that today a specific strategy is needed. Not dancing until you forget. Not shouting in the car. But sitting down with someone who knows how to put into words what you can't find. There's a form of care in that gesture. It isn't therapy, it doesn't replace anything, but it's a small act of attention towards yourself: I notice what I need and I give it to myself.

And if the sadness lasts too long, if there's no record left that can shift it, it's worth knowing there are more doors than the one on your music player. I say it in all my texts and I'll keep saying it: in Spain you can call 024, the free suicide-prevention line, open 24 hours a day, even if you're not in crisis and just need to talk. In an emergency, 112. If you're outside Spain, call your local emergency number. Asking for help isn't overreacting.

The other song with his name

It's not the first time Ismael Serrano's name has appeared in one of my titles. There's another song, «El concierto de Ismael Serrano» (Ismael Serrano's concert), which does have its lyrics published and which tells the story of being stood up. Someone promised to go to that concert and didn't. The narrator is left waiting in the queue since early in the morning, and says so with a question repeated like a scratched record: «¿Por qué me prometiste acompañarme al concierto de Ismael Serrano?» (Why did you promise to come with me to Ismael Serrano's concert?). It ends, literally, «solo escuchando Caperucita» (alone, listening to Caperucita), and throws at the absent person an «¡Eres un tirano!» (You're a tyrant!) that still makes me laugh.

Read together, the two songs form a kind of diptych. In one, Serrano's music is the setting of an absence: a place someone never reached. In the other, at least judging by the title, it's a decision you make on your own. I don't know whether listeners of «Hoy toca escuchar a Ismael Serrano» will hear it as a follow-up to the first. The lyrics aren't published yet and I'm not going to anticipate what can't be read. But I like the idea that something has happened between the two: from waiting for someone to listen to an artist to waiting for nobody to do it.

There's a small lesson in that which matters a lot to me. We often stop doing what we love because we associate it with another person. We don't go back to that restaurant, that beach, that record. As if the other person had taken the place with them too. Getting those things back, one by one, is part of any break-up that ends well. One day you realise the restaurant is still yours. One day you put the record on and find you still like it, even though there's no one beside you anymore.

The blog already has an essay that looks at another side of «El concierto de Ismael Serrano»: compassion for the new one, the person who comes after. Here I'd rather stay with the record. With «Caperucita», a real 1998 single, the fourth track on «Atrapados en azul», which in my lyrics works as the exact sound of loneliness in the middle of a crowd. Hundreds of people around you, the same song on every pair of lips, and you without the person you'd planned to share it with.

Vallecas, Madrid and the neighbourhood as a school

I like that the musician in this title is from Vallecas. Not out of Madrid chauvinism, though that too, but because Vallecas is one of those neighbourhoods that have become a symbol. Of residents' struggles, of the working class, of a football club with a social conscience, of the memory of internal migration in the fifties and sixties, when thousands of families arrived in Madrid from Andalusia, Extremadura or Castile and built homes wherever they could.

That history of people who came to the city with a suitcase and set up their lives on the outskirts is very present in Madrid's songwriter tradition. And in my lyrics too, although mine talk more about stairwells, clubs and exes than about neighbourhood assemblies. «Madrid» is a city that turns up again and again in my catalogue, sometimes as a postcard and sometimes as the very opposite. I wrote about that in «Madrid sin postal», and this title is another piece of that map: the Madrid of cafés with tiny stages, of concerts where the whole audience knows the lyrics, of Sunday afternoons with a record on.

For a queer kid growing up in the nineties, songwriter music was also a strange kind of refuge. It was music by boys with guitars, often very heterosexual in its stories, but also very sensitive, very willing to talk about feelings without apologising. At a time when boys were required not to cry, there were men who got up on a stage to say their heart had been broken. For a teenager who didn't fit in, that was a form of permission.

What its place on the list says

On the singles list, «Hoy toca escuchar a Ismael Serrano» is track 197 of 273. Just before it comes «Montaña rusa» (Roller coaster), and just after it, «Karma (Versión Alternativa)». I like looking at those neighbours because sometimes they tell a story without meaning to.

A roller coaster is the most worn-out image in the world for a relationship full of ups and downs, and that's exactly why it works: everyone knows what the drop feels like. After that, sitting down to listen to a calm record makes perfect sense. It's what you do when you get off the ride and your legs are still shaking. And then comes karma, in an alternative version, which is like saying: life gives back what it receives, but not always with the same melody.

I'm not claiming the order of the singles is a story planned from start to finish. There are 273 songs and each has its own history. But some neighbourhoods make you smile. Going from the roller coaster to the afternoon of records, and from the afternoon of records to karma, is a sequence anyone who has been through a break-up will recognise.

The single is part of «El día de la liberación» (Liberation Day), one of the three albums of the Gayfolk trilogy. And the word liberation counts here too. Freeing yourself isn't always a big movie scene. Sometimes it's something as small as putting back on a record you'd banned yourself from since that person left.

The boy in black and the guitar nobody plays

I'm going back to the cover, because there's a detail I don't want to skip. The boy has the guitar resting between his legs, but he doesn't seem to be playing it. He's holding it. He looks down. It's the instant before the music, or the one immediately after. That moment when the instrument is in your hands and hasn't sounded yet, or has already sounded and only the echo remains.

That image seems perfect to me for a song about listening. Because really listening has a lot of that in it: holding something without making noise. Letting someone else speak. Not interrupting. In an age when everybody has something to say and somewhere to say it, listening to someone for forty minutes without looking at your phone is almost an act of rebellion.

And the ruffled clothes, in that dry field, add another layer. They're not the clothes of someone going to work the land. They're the clothes of someone who dressed up for an occasion, a performance, a party or a funeral, and ended up sitting in the middle of nowhere. There's drama in that, drama with a capital D, and humour too. Very much my planet: mourning with sequins, grief with styling.

Listening alone is company too

For a long time, listening to music alone has been seen as a bit sad. The image of the boy shut in his room with headphones on, cut off from the world, has been used to talk about isolation, oddness, the problem teenager. But I think there's another way to see it.

When you listen to a writer who matters to you, you're not completely alone. There's someone on the other side who, at some point, sat down to write that thinking of people like you. There are thousands of people who have listened to that same song in their own rooms, in other cities, in other years. Recorded music is a strange kind of company: asynchronous, without contact, but real.

That doesn't replace people, and I don't want to romanticise loneliness. Unwanted loneliness is a serious problem, and sometimes music covers it up instead of easing it. But there's a difference between isolating yourself and taking a moment. Between hiding and gathering yourself. «Hoy toca» sounds more like the second: someone who knows that today they need a while alone with a record, and grants it to themselves without guilt.

A plan for any afternoon

If you ask me who this song is for, I'd say for anyone who has a refuge artist. It doesn't have to be Ismael Serrano. It can be Rocío Jurado, Radiohead or Camela. What matters is the habit: knowing that when things go wrong there's somewhere to go back to, and that somewhere fits on a record.

It's also for anyone left with a spare ticket. For anyone who stopped listening to their favourite artist because they reminded them of someone. For anyone who's gone months without listening to music with attention, only in the background while doing something else. For anyone who needs someone to give them permission to stop.

And it is, of course, a tribute. Putting a real musician's name in a song title is a way of saying thank you. Thank you for the afternoons, for the lyrics, for making so many working-class kids feel less alone with a guitar and a handful of lines. I don't know if Ismael Serrano will ever hear this song. The songs I write about famous people almost never reach them, and that's fine. But the thanks have been given.

While we wait for the lyrics

When the lyrics are published, this post will have a natural companion: the song page, with the lines exactly as written. Until then, what there is is a title, a sepia cover and an official video. And the invitation hidden in the phrase. Put on whatever record today calls for. Sit down. Do nothing else for a while.

You can listen to the single on your favourite platform or download it for free from the downloads page, with no sign-up or payment. And if you feel like staying on the same track, play «El concierto de Ismael Serrano» afterwards, which has its full lyrics published, and listen to both in a row, like reading two chapters of the same novel without being entirely sure they are.

Frequently asked questions

What is «Hoy toca escuchar a Ismael Serrano» about? The lyrics haven't been published yet, so this post doesn't quote or summarise them. What can be read is the title: an afternoon plan, the habit of choosing a record to match your mood, and a tribute to Madrid's songwriter tradition.

Who is Ismael Serrano? A songwriter born in Vallecas, Madrid, in 1974. He made his debut in 1997 with «Atrapados en azul», an album that includes «Papá cuéntame otra vez», «Vértigo», «Amo tanto la vida» and «Caperucita».

Is it related to «El concierto de Ismael Serrano»? They're two different songs by Mike Sain't Louis with the same musician's name in the title. «El concierto de Ismael Serrano» tells the story of being stood up and has its lyrics published. Reading them together is this post's suggestion, not a claim about the lyrics.

What does the single's cover look like? A photo that looks old, in sepia tones, showing a boy dressed in black with ruffles and embroidery, sitting in a dry field with a Spanish guitar between his legs, looking down.

Which album is it on? On «El día de la liberación», one of the three albums of the Gayfolk trilogy. On the singles list it's track 197 of 273, between «Montaña rusa» and «Karma (Versión Alternativa)».

Who makes this song? Mike Sain't Louis, a lyricist, composer and music producer from Madrid, the first AI songwriter. He writes the lyrics and directs the production; the music and performances are generated with artificial intelligence.