Heavier than a Goya: melodrama as a unit of measurement in «Almodóvar»

«No me hagas hablar.» («Don't make me talk.»)

It's what the neighbourhood ladies have always said when they're about to spill everything. Your aunt says it in the kitchen, tea towel over her shoulder, just before she lets slip the thing about your cousin. «Don't make me talk, I know things.» It's a threat and an invitation at once. Don't make me talk actually means: ask me one more time and I'll tell you every last detail.

That's how «Almodóvar» begins. And what follows is the most over-the-top comparison I've ever made:

No me hagas hablar / Que ni Almodóvar / en sus mejores tiempos (Don't make me talk / Not even Almodóvar / in his best days)

Not even Almodóvar. Not even the man from La Mancha in his finest decade could have filmed this drama.

It's one of the shortest lyrics in the catalogue. Four ideas, a four-word chorus and a rhyme that still makes me laugh. The song's page has the basics. Here I want to talk about something else: why, to measure a heartbreak, I picked up Pedro Almodóvar's films as my ruler. And a Goya, Spain's film award, as my scales.

Measuring pain with whatever's to hand

Everyone measures their drama with what they know. There were generations who measured their upsets in Corín Tellado romance novels. Mine measures them in telenovelas, afternoon soaps, reality shows. Anyone who grew up with «Sálvame» measures them in tabloid-TV panel rows. And anyone who grew up queer in Spain, at some point, measures them in Almodóvar.

There's no other unit like it. Almodóvar is the metric system of melodrama in this country. When something is wildly over the top, all mascara-streaked weeping, all women on the verge, we say «this is so Almodóvar». No further explanation needed. Everyone gets it.

So the lyric uses him that way. My pain is so huge that not even Almodóvar. And then, so as not to fall short, it switches units: «more weighty than a Goya».

Not even Almodóvar in his best days

The line has a trap in it, and whoever spots it will laugh.

«In his best days.» Which are Almodóvar's best days? That's where the bar argument starts. Some say the eighties, the Movida, «Pepi, Luci, Bom», «What Have I Done to Deserve This?», «Law of Desire», «Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown». Others say the nineties and early two-thousands, «All About My Mother», «Talk to Her», with their Oscars. Others say «Volver». Others, «Pain and Glory», in 2019, when he started talking about himself with Antonio Banderas as his alter ego.

I don't choose. The lyric doesn't say which are the best days. It leaves it open on purpose, because everyone has their favourite Almodóvar, and the comparison works with any of them. What it says is that at his very best, whichever you prefer, he wouldn't get anywhere near this.

It's textbook exaggeration. And exaggeration in my house has its laws, like the ten commandments I've got written down somewhere. One of them is that the comparison has to be with the biggest thing going. If you're going to exaggerate, don't stop at the local fleapit. Go straight for the man from La Mancha.

Pepa, the gazpacho and the tradition

There's another reason for choosing Almodóvar and not someone else, and it's about the type of drama.

In «Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown», Pepa, played by Carmen Maura, makes a gazpacho laced with sleeping pills while she waits for news of the man who's left her. It's one of the most famous scenes in Spanish cinema. A woman wrecked by abandonment, and what she does is start cooking. With poison, but cooking.

That's Almodóvar's type of drama: enormous heartbreak stuffed into a kitchen, among household appliances, in impossible colours and with an irony that doesn't lessen the pain but makes it more visible. It's exactly what I try to do in my songs. The everyday and the tacky right next to the tragic. Tragedy in an apron.

I'm not comparing myself to him, let's be clear. Not in my dreams. What I'm saying is that his way of telling heartbreak is one of the traditions I drink from. Just as I drink from copla, as I explained in why the same old drama suits queer pop so well. Almodóvar and copla are cousins. Both give the abandoned woman a stage and a red dress.

Heavier than a Goya

The second line of the second block:

este dolor es más pesado / que un Goya (this pain weighs more / than a Goya)

This is my favourite line in the song, because of the physical image. A Goya is a bronze statuette. A bust of the painter, in metal, on a base. Not one of those plastic trophies they hand out at padel leagues. It weighs a ton. You can see it at the ceremony, when the winners lift it and their arm buckles a bit while they thank their mum and their production company.

So the pain in the song weighs more than that. It's a concrete measurement. It doesn't say «this pain is huge» or «this pain is infinite», which are daytime-radio lines. It says: pick up a Goya, feel the weight. Well, more than that.

And a Goya is also an award. It's the prize for the best drama of the year. By saying my pain weighs more than a Goya, I'm also saying my drama deserves to win one. It's a very subtle bit of self-parody: I'm handing myself the award for best dramatic performance for my own heartbreak. Acceptance speech and all.

And then, without warning, the punch.

And all for thinking with my dick

y todo por pensar con la polla (and all for thinking with my dick)

In Spanish, «polla» rhymes with «Goya». And it wrecks the lot.

All the solemnity of Almodóvar, of his best days, of the bronze, of award-worthy drama, collapses in a single line. Why so much pain? For thinking with my dick. For getting carried away by what I shouldn't have. For not using the head upstairs.

This is the most me bit of the song, and I think it's what makes it work. If the lyric stayed in melodrama, it would be one more complaint, with film references to look clever. With «thinking with my dick», the speaker points the finger at himself. He doesn't blame the ex. He doesn't say «you've destroyed me». He says: I brought this on myself, because I was horny.

There's something almost confessional about that line. In the church of my childhood, or anyone's childhood in this country, you knelt and said «I confess that». Here the speaker confesses in public, with a rhyme and a tune, to having thought with the wrong thing. It's the cheapest penance in the world: three minutes of song and a bit of embarrassment.

I laugh at myself before anyone else does. It's a rule I follow whenever I can. First I mock myself, and then, if there's ammunition left, the other one.

And the Goya-polla rhyme is, I admit, one of the slightly embarrassing kind. An easy assonant rhyme, o-a. But second-hand embarrassment is a tool too, as I wrote in second-hand embarrassment as a writing tool. A rhyme that makes you cringe a little forces the listener to smile. And a smile at the wrong moment, in the middle of a drama, is exactly what I wanted.

I don't love you any more

The chorus is a single phrase, repeated:

y es que yo / ya no te quiero (because I / don't love you any more)

With every vowel stretched out. Yoooooo. Quierooooo.

After so much Almodóvar, so much Goya and so much dick, the final line is the simplest in the world. I don't love you any more. Five words everyone says and hardly anyone believes when they say them.

In the catalogue I have a whole song with that title, «Ya no te quiero», and on its page I wrote that the phrase «es esa mentira que uno se repite para no romperse del todo», that lie you keep telling yourself so you don't fall apart completely. It works the same way here. Stretching the vowels out that much gives the speaker away. Someone who's genuinely stopped loving says it quickly and leaves. Someone who drags out «quierooooo» for three seconds is a long way from being over it. The long vowels are the line's subtitles. They say: liar.

And that's very Almodóvar too, by the way. His characters say one thing with their mouths and another with their eyes. What gets said isn't what's felt, and the audience knows it before they do.

A two-verse song

«Almodóvar» has very few words. Two almost identical blocks, the second with the Goya variation, and then the chorus repeated several times.

I like having songs like that in the catalogue. They don't all have to be long letters with the ex's name, surname and CV. Sometimes an idea fits in four lines and the rest is repeating it. Like a film trailer: a couple of well-chosen shots and you know what it's about.

And the brevity is part of the joke. «Don't make me talk», says the lyric. And then, sure enough, it hardly talks at all. It threatens to tell everything and tells nothing. It just leaves two clues, the Goya and the dick, and repeats that it doesn't love you any more. You imagine the rest. Like real neighbours, who never quite finish the story, who leave you hanging and the stairwell full of speculation.

The shortest title

I have very long titles. «No puedo desenchufar este ventilador que está esparciendo mierda» («I can't unplug this fan that's spraying shit everywhere»). «Me he enamorado de un policía que es dueño de una lavandería» («I've fallen for a policeman who owns a launderette»). «Ojalá hubiera tenido de suegra a Carmina Barrios» («If only I'd had Carmina Barrios as a mother-in-law»). Titles that look like headlines from El Caso, the old Spanish crime rag, which I talked about in long, odd titles.

«Almodóvar» is the opposite. A surname. Nothing else.

It seemed to me nothing else was needed. A surname like that, on its own, is already a genre. If I put «Almodóvar» on the cover, whoever reads it already knows there'll be drama, colour, women on the verge and some tragedy in an apron. The title is the first exaggeration. Before you hear a note, you've walked into the film.

His girls and mine

Almodóvar has his girls. Carmen Maura, Chus Lampreave, Rossy de Palma, Loles León, Marisa Paredes, Penélope Cruz. Actresses who come on screen with the drama already on. They don't need to speak. Rossy de Palma walks into a shot with her cubist profile and the shot is already Almodóvar.

I have my girls too. They're not my actresses, of course, I don't direct anyone but myself, but they're the women who turn up in the catalogue's titles and lyrics. Carmina Barrios, Paco León's mother, whom I'd have loved to have as a mother-in-law, as one song says. Ylenia Padilla, whom I publicly support in another. Malena Gracia, candidate in galactic elections. Yurena, who isn't Tamara the bad one. La Veneno, with her «and who the hell are you, maricón?».

If you think about it, they're very Almodóvar girls. Women of the telly, of copla, of the gossip press, of scandal. Women Spain has laughed at a lot and loved too little. Almodóvar sat them at his table before anyone else. I, far more modestly, write songs for them.

That's why it made sense for the director's surname to be on one of my titles. It's like putting on the cover the name of the neighbourhood they all come from.

Thinking with your dick: a house tradition

The dick line is no accident in the catalogue. It's practically editorial policy.

There are lots of songs of mine where the speaker gets into a mess because he's horny. In «Buscando el polvo perfecto» the pressure to have a good time becomes a verdict: «que si no te diviertes ya estás sentenciado... ¡pringado!» («if you're not having fun you're done for... loser!»). In «Que te mola el cruising» desire runs ahead of everything else. In «Bareback» there's a rejection full of cheek: «Ni de coña […] Mi niño, es que ni para chapero» («No way in hell […] Sweetheart, you wouldn't even make it as a rent boy»).

What they all have in common is that desire never comes free. There's always a bill. Sometimes it's a laugh, sometimes a hangover, sometimes a pain heavier than a Goya.

And what they also have in common is that there's no sermon. I'm not saying desire is wrong. I'm not saying you should always think with the head upstairs, how dull would that be. I'm saying that when you think with the one downstairs, it can cost you, and the best you can do afterwards is laugh at yourself. That's the whole house ethic on the subject.

In «Almodóvar» the bill is in the last line of the block, right after the bronze and the award. Put it in the same sentence as the Goya and the contrast jumps out. Awards gala. Horniness. Awards gala. Horniness. A whole life in two rhymes. Mine, to be honest, fits in rather fewer, but that would be another song, probably with a long title.

The song, in pictures

Every song of mine comes out with its cover and its music video; it's one of the house rules, «every song, its image». They're all on the videos page. With a song called «Almodóvar», the temptation would be to fill the image with red, heels, gondola phones and gazpacho. The risk of copying the director is sky-high, and the result would be a market-stall parody, like a costume bought at a bazaar on Calle Toledo the night before Carnival.

I won't describe the video here, that's what the video is for. What I will say, because it's in the lyric, is that the song uses Almodóvar as a measure, not a costume. Saying «this is more dramatic than one of his films» is one thing; dressing up as an Almodóvar girl is another. The first is a joke with a tribute in it. The second, a fancy-dress party.

Why on «El día de la liberación»

The song is on the third album, «El día de la liberación». That might seem odd, because it's a fresh-heartbreak song, the kind that usually lives on the first album, with the wound still open.

But look at the chorus. I don't love you any more. Even if it's half a lie, even if the long vowels give it away, it's a liberation line. It's the attempt to cut loose. And the liberation album is exactly that: not the day when everything's behind you, but the day you decide it's over, even if you can hardly believe it yourself.

I explained it in «El día de la liberación» and the day after. Liberation isn't a state. It's a decision you have to keep making. Like this song's chorus: I don't love you any more, I don't love you any more, I don't love you any more. Until one day it's true.

Almodóvar and queer humour

I don't want to finish without saying something about why it matters to me that Almodóvar's surname is the title of one of my songs.

Almodóvar was one of the first to put maricas, transvestites, trans women and women of every kind at the centre of Spanish cinema as protagonists, not as a joke in the background. He did it with humour, loads of humour, but a humour that laughed with them, not at them. I've thought a lot about that difference, between other people's laughter and our own, and wrote about it in from other people's laughter to our own.

So using him as a unit of measurement is both a joke and a tribute. It says: my drama gets measured by your yardstick, because you were the one who taught us our dramas deserved a film.

And at the same time, of course, it's a joke. Because in my song the drama is down to thinking with my dick. Which, come to think of it, is very Almodóvar too.

Read it

The full lyrics are on their lyrics page. They take half a minute to read. I'd recommend reading them aloud, in the tone of your aunt in the kitchen for «don't make me talk». Then in the tone of an actor collecting an award, for the Goya. Then in the tone of someone who's just realised it was all because he was horny, for the dick.

Three characters in four lines. Almodóvar has made films with fewer.

What isn't in the song

There are no names. Not the ex's, not anyone's. In other songs I give a name, a neighbourhood and a job. Not here. The only proper name is Almodóvar's, and it's there as a measure, not a character.

There are no details of the story. We don't know what happened, when or where. Only that the speaker thought with his dick, that it hurts more than a Goya and that he says he doesn't love him any more. The listener supplies the rest. And I think that's why the song works for so many people: we've all got one of those Goyas stashed in a cupboard somewhere.

And there's no moral. Well, maybe one, and it's so dry it barely counts: think with your head. But we all knew that already, and we still don't do it.

The best lines are the ones aunts say

I'll finish where I started. «Don't make me talk.» A lot of my best lines aren't mine: they belong to neighbours, aunts, the ladies at the market, the people chatting in the fishmonger's queue. That way of exaggerating, of threatening to tell, of comparing any upset to a film, is the Spanish of the street, and I wrote about it in the exaggeration of everyday Spanish speech and my lyrics.

I just set it to music. Well, the machine does, following my directions. But the line comes from the street. And the street, in this country, has always been very Almodóvar.

Frequently asked questions

What is «Almodóvar» about? About a heartbreak so dramatic that, according to the lyric, «not even Almodóvar in his best days» would film it. The pain is «más pesado que un Goya», heavier than a Goya, and all «por pensar con la polla», for thinking with his dick. The chorus repeats «ya no te quiero», I don't love you any more.

Is it a tribute to Pedro Almodóvar? It uses his films as the unit of measurement for melodrama. Mike Sain't Louis means it as a joke and, at the same time, as a small tribute to the man who put queer stories at the centre of Spanish cinema.

Which album is «Almodóvar» on? «El día de la liberación», the third album of Planeta Gayfolk's GAYFOLK trilogy.

Who wrote «Almodóvar»? Mike Sain't Louis, a lyricist, composer and producer from Madrid. The music and vocals are produced using artificial intelligence as a tool; the lyrics are his.

Is there another song with «ya no te quiero»? Yes, «Ya no te quiero», from the first album, whose text describes the phrase as «that lie you keep telling yourself so you don't fall apart completely».