«La vecina cotilla»: the character we all have on our landing

There's one title in my catalogue that works like a master key: «La vecina cotilla», the nosy neighbour. It needs no explanation. Say it in Madrid, in Caracas or in Valparaíso and the other person is already pulling a face, the face of someone in particular. A lady with a well-worn peephole. A gentleman who's always watering his plants just as you get home at six in the morning. Everybody has one. And if you think there isn't one in your building, I have bad news for you.

I've been interested in that character for a long time, and not because of anything a particular song says about her, but because of what it says about us that we recognise her so fast.

A job with no contract

The nosy neighbour works longer hours than anyone in the block. She knows who gets parcels, who's changed boyfriend, who's hanging the washing out in a hurry because they're off on a trip and who hasn't taken the rubbish down in three days. She isn't paid. She gets no holidays. Her tool is patience, and patience is a formidable tool when you apply it to other people's lives.

The odd thing is we almost never picture her as wicked. Annoying, yes. A pain, certainly. But there's something of the neighbourhood guardian about her. If you faint on the stairs, she'll be the first to know. Probably before you do.

That ambiguity is gold for a writer. A character who's both threat and refuge gives you far more than one who's only one thing.

Why it hits close to home for us

For a gay lad living in a building full of long-standing neighbours, the nosy neighbour carries a particular weight. For a long time, being watched through the peephole wasn't just irritating. It was the chance that word would get out. Who came up with you, what time he left, whether he was the same one as last week. The landing was a little courtroom and she was presiding.

Today, in many cities, that has changed quite a lot. And it's precisely that change that lets me laugh. When fear turns its volume down, the character who caused it becomes comic. The neighbour is still watching, but you've got nothing left to hide, so she's the one who ends up looking a little ridiculous, ear pressed to the door, waiting for a scandal that never comes because to you it's no scandal at all.

That reversal strikes me as one of the loveliest things humour can do. You take something that made you small and put it on stage under the lights. She's not watching you any more. You're the one watching her.

Gossip is one of the oldest engines of popular song. Copla, the old Spanish torch song, is full of people talking, whole villages murmuring, "what will people say" weighing more than any law. Latin pop has its gossips too, its comadres on the phone, its girlfriends telling you what they saw. And English-language pop has made a fortune out of songs that are, deep down, a rumour with good production.

The thing is, the gossip is usually off camera. She's background noise. What draws me to putting her in a song title is moving her to the centre. Making her the lead. Letting the spotlight fall on the one who's always watching everyone else's.

I'm not going to tell you what happens in the song. You've got that on the website, with the full lyrics and the music video, and I'd rather you heard it without me summing it up. But I will say the title already does half the work. With two words and an article you've built a set: a building, a landing, a door left ajar.

The gossip inside us

Here comes the awkward part. We've all got a bit of the nosy neighbour in us. Me first of all.

We watch the stories of people we don't know. We know who a friend's ex is seeing. We zoom in on a photo to see whose hand that is in the corner. Social media has turned the landing into a building with millions of flats, and we've all got one eye to the peephole.

When I laugh at the neighbour, I'm laughing a little at myself. And I think that's why the character works so well: the audience laughs at her with the calm of someone who doesn't recognise himself, and two minutes later realises he does. That little surprise is what I'm after when I write with humour. For the mockery to turn round and come home.

I don't want to write a moral treatise. Gossip has its ugly side, of course, and it can do a lot of damage when it becomes a weapon. But it's also a kind of social glue. Talking about other people is a clumsy way of saying they matter to us. The neighbour who knows what time you get home is also the one who notices when you haven't.

Characters that fit in a title

On PLANETA GAYFOLK I like working with figures like that, recognisable in a second, who need no introduction. It's a bit like copla, which filled the stage with human types who had a name and a trade. The nosy neighbour belongs to that family. She doesn't need a surname. You already know what she's called, because she's called whatever yours is called.

I sometimes wonder whether real nosy neighbours will ever hear the song. I'd love that, honestly. And it scares me a little, because then they'd find out everything.

In two years I've released 273 singles and many of them have characters like this, neighbourhood people, block-of-flats people, group-chat people. The neighbour is one of my favourites because she never ages. Technology changes, peepholes give way to doorbell cameras, but she's still there, in her housecoat, with her infinite curiosity. One day it'll be me. I know it. I'm already in training.

The song, with its lyrics and music video, is at mikesaintlouis.com.