Narcissus, Echo and a flamethrower: what «El narcisista» owes to the myth

A man stands in the middle of a desert at night. He's wearing a full suit, jacket and trousers, patterned as if made of embers or lava: black patches and orange cracks that look as though they're still glowing. Behind his back, two enormous wings made of fire spread open. Above him, a sky full of stars, with the Milky Way running across it. In the background, on the horizon, a huge, solitary red rock that recalls Uluru, in Australia. And at the bottom, in thick fire-coloured letters, the title.

That's the cover of «El narcisista», «The narcissist», and the first time I looked at it properly, one thing made me smile. Everything in that picture is burning. The wings, the suit, the reddish ground, even the lettering. And yet the song talks about a frozen heart. Absolute cold. Ice that won't melt even with a flamethrower.

The song is on «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk», the first album of the trilogy. It came out on 29 May 2026, and it's number 206 in the full list of singles, right after «El día de la liberación». Its page on the blog already covers the smear campaign, the karma and the fun of a song calling itself a musical. Here I want to do something else: read it alongside the myth the word comes from. Because before it became an insult in WhatsApp groups, "narcissist" was a beautiful boy staring into a pool.

A boy, a pool and a nymph who repeats

The best-known version of the Narcissus myth is the one Ovid tells in the «Metamorphoses», in Book Three. Narcissus is a stunningly beautiful young man who rejects everyone who comes near him. Among those who fall for him is Echo, a nymph punished by the goddess Juno so that she can't speak for herself: she can only repeat the last words other people say. Echo follows Narcissus through the forest, tries to get close, and he pushes her away. She wastes away with grief until all that's left of her is the sound that repeats.

Later, Narcissus leans over a pool to drink, sees his own reflection and falls in love with it. He can't look away. He can't touch what he loves, because it's an image on the water. He stays there until he wastes away and, in the place where he had been, a flower appears: the narcissus.

I find it fascinating that a song from 2026 fits so neatly into a story two thousand years old. Because the myth has two characters, and we almost always remember only one. We remember the handsome one gazing at himself. And we forget the one who stays beside him, repeating, trying to be heard, slowly fading away.

«El narcisista» is told from Echo's side.

The chorus as an echo

Look at how the lyrics are built. The chorus comes back again and again, almost identical, and at the end it's repeated three times in a row. What it says is always the same: that the narcissist hates whoever loves him, that he never loved you, that his heart is frozen.

You could think it's just a matter of pop structure, and partly it is: choruses repeat because they need to stick. But in this song the repetition carries a different weight. It's the way someone talks when nobody has listened to them. When nobody believes you, you say the same thing once, and again, and again. Like Echo, who has only repeated words to make herself heard.

And then there's that English word that gets stretched out: «pero está frozen», "but it's frozen". The first time, the vowel is drawn out for ages; the last time, the word triples, frozen frozen frozen. That's literally an echo. A word that bounces back and returns fainter, further away. I'm not sure there's a more exact way to write what it's like to shout at a wall.

Fire on the outside, ice on the inside

Back to the cover, because I think it explains something about the song. The man with the fiery wings isn't burning with passion. He's posing. Hands in his pockets, chin slightly raised, a direct stare. It's an image of power and display. Look how spectacular I am, it seems to say.

That's how the narcissistic person works in the song: all spectacle on the outside and cold on the inside. The fire is the façade, the glitter, the part that dazzles everyone else. The ice is what you find when you get close. That's why the flamethrower doesn't work. It's not that more heat is needed. The fire is already there, but it's papier-mâché, stage scenery, and the heart is still below zero.

There's an even more uncomfortable reading: that the man in the ember suit isn't the narcissist but the one who tried everything. The one who set himself on fire to keep someone else warm. The wings would then be what's left after so much effort: spectacular, yes, but made of something that's burning you. Both readings work for me, and I like that the image doesn't choose.

The desert and the rock

The background isn't accidental in what it conveys either. A desert at night is a huge, empty place. There are stars, there's dry scrub, there's an enormous, isolated rock on the horizon. There's nobody else.

It's a good portrait of how someone is left after a relationship like that. With a vast amount of space around them and nobody close. With mutual friends who heard the other version first. With the feeling of talking in a landscape where sound doesn't bounce off anything.

And that red rock, alone, enormous, has something symbolic about it too. What doesn't move. What has always been there and will still be there when everything has passed. It could be the narcissist, who doesn't change. Or it could be the truth, which is exactly what the song wants to bring to light.

The switch of person

There's a writing detail I love, and it's easier to see if you read the lyrics slowly. The song starts out in the second person: the narcissist never loved you, you even tried with a flamethrower. It sounds like someone talking to a friend, comforting him.

And suddenly, halfway through a verse, the person changes. It's no longer you, it's me: don't listen to me, I even go to a psychologist, leaving me half dead. The friend doing the comforting turns out to be the same person. He's talking to himself.

That happens a lot in real life. When someone like that has hurt you, part of you becomes your own friend, the one who tells you from outside what you don't dare tell yourself from within. He never loved you. You tried everything. It's not your fault. And then, the moment you lower your guard, you're back in the first person and the pain comes straight out.

The song doesn't correct that switch or disguise it. It leaves it exactly as it is, the way people really think, jumping from you to me without asking permission.

Going to a psychologist is not a weapon

There's a line I think is one of the most important in the whole song, even though it goes by quickly. Among the things the narcissist tells their colleagues to discredit the other person is this: that he even goes to a psychologist.

That "even" says it all. As if going to therapy were the final proof that someone isn't right in the head and shouldn't be believed. As if asking for help meant you lost the argument.

I think it needs saying plainly, without a chorus: going to a psychologist is not an argument against anyone. It's one of the most sensible things a person who is struggling can do. Using it to discredit someone is cruel, and absurd too. The strange thing would be to come out of a relationship that has left you in pieces and not need any help.

If you recognise yourself in this song and you're in a very dark place, don't keep it to yourself. In Spain there's 024, free and available at any hour. If there's immediate danger, call 112. If you're outside Spain, call your local emergency number.

From the pool to the consulting room

The word didn't jump straight from Ovid to WhatsApp groups. Along the way it passed through psychology. In the late nineteenth century, the British physician Havelock Ellis used the figure of Narcissus to describe a form of excessive self-love. And in 1914 Sigmund Freud published «On Narcissism», the essay that made the term a central piece of psychoanalysis.

Since then the word has had many lives. There's a narcissism the textbooks consider healthy, the kind that lets you love yourself a little and look after yourself. There are narcissistic traits almost all of us show at some point. And there's a specific disorder, with clinical criteria, which is much less common than the internet would have you believe.

The curious thing is that, in everyday use, the word has gone back to the myth. When someone says their ex was a narcissist, they're almost never thinking of Freud. They're thinking of the simple thing Ovid tells: a person who could only look at himself and left someone else wasting away beside him.

The song uses the word in that sense, the everyday one and the mythical one. It doesn't pretend to be a treatise. It wants whoever listens to recognise the scene: the pool, the reflection, the one who repeats and isn't heard. And in that, I think, it hits the mark.

The word narcissist, handled with care

These days "narcissist" gets used for almost everything. For the ex who didn't reply, for the boss who takes the credit, for the friend who only talks about himself. Social media is full of videos explaining how to spot one.

It's worth remembering that narcissistic personality disorder is a clinical diagnosis that only a professional can make. A song doesn't diagnose anyone. What a song does is something else: it gives a name to an experience. It tells what it feels like to be next to someone who doesn't see you, who uses you as a mirror and, when you stop reflecting him prettily, turns you into the villain.

In that sense, «El narcisista» isn't a medical report. It's a release. And a release has every right to be exaggerated, unfair at times and very loud. That's what songs are for.

Artist or terrorist

One of the most venomous lines is the one where the narcissist never saw you as an artist but as a terrorist. I love it because it works first through sound, «artista» and «terrorista» almost rhyme completely, and then through meaning.

What it says is that the person who creates, who writes, who makes songs, was seen as a threat. And that fits the myth very well. Narcissus can only love his reflection. Anyone with words of their own, a world of their own, something other than handing his image back to him, gets in his way. Echo didn't bother him for repeating; she bothered him for existing.

Someone who makes art is never going to be a good mirror. They'll always be looking at other things, telling other stories, taking up space that isn't the other person's. For someone who needs to be the centre, that's almost an attack.

The real truth

Towards the end comes an expression that looks redundant and isn't: «la verdad real», "the real truth". Not that version of the story you've made up, but the real truth.

When someone has told you your own life backwards for a long time, the word truth wears out. Everyone claims to have their own. That's why it needs an adjective, like someone putting two locks on the same door. The truth, yes, but the real one. The one that happened.

That pleonasm strikes me as very honest, because it's how people talk when they're exhausted from explaining themselves. You're not after the elegant phrase. You want there to be no doubt.

And here I come back to Echo. In the myth, the nymph is robbed of her own way of speaking. In the song, the person who was condemned to repeat the other's account finally gets something Echo never had: words of their own. A whole song, with its chorus, its stretched vowels and its real truth.

A musical against silence

The song's page already mentions the fun of the lyrics calling themselves a musical. What I'd add, from the myth, is something else: a musical is the opposite of the pool.

Narcissus stays still, in silence, gazing at himself. A musical is noise, movement, people watching, a stage. If the narcissist stays stuck to his reflection, the other person answers by stepping onto a stage with lights. Not to look at himself, but to be seen and heard. So that what happened is told by the one who lived it.

There's some poetic justice in that. The one who wasn't listened to replies with the loudest form there is.

I can't take any more

The song's other cry is one of exhaustion: I'm not going to put up with any more, I can't take any more, with the vowels stretched until they almost break. I like that, in the lyrics, these are things that were said to the narcissist and that he didn't believe. He never believed you when you told him you couldn't take any more.

There's the myth again. Nobody listens to Echo either. She can shout all she likes, but her words get lost in the forest. The terrible thing about these relationships is that the warning does get given. It's not that the person said nothing. They said it, several times, loudly. The other person chose not to hear it.

That's why I think it matters so much that the song repeats those phrases. If he didn't hear them the first time, let him hear them on a loop.

Karma as a mirror

The lyrics ask whether you remember what I told you about karma and answer that here it is: the bad things you've done are turning against you. In the Planeta Gayfolk universe, karma is almost a recurring character, with its own song, «Karma».

From the myth's point of view, the karma in these lyrics has a very specific shape: it's a mirror that sends things back. Narcissus ended up trapped in his own reflection. The punishment didn't come from outside; it came from himself, from not being able to look at anything else. And the song imagines something similar: that the harm done bounces back, the way an echo bounces, and returns to where it came from.

I don't know whether karma exists. But I completely understand the relief of imagining it.

And I like that the song puts it as a reminder, almost like an unfinished conversation. It doesn't say karma will arrive one day. It says it's already here, here it is. It's the certainty of someone who has stopped waiting for the other person to change and has decided to tell their side, whatever happens next.

What's left of the mud

There's a very harsh image in the song: being left half dead and naked, drowning in the mud, while the others smiled. It's a physical image, real mud, someone on the ground.

I notice the contrast with the cover. In the lyrics, the protagonist is in the mud, right at the bottom. In the picture, the man is standing, tall, with wings. As if the cover showed the aftermath. Someone who got out of the mud, shook himself off and planted himself in the middle of the desert with wings of fire. Maybe not healed, but on his feet.

And that's also a way of reading the flower in the myth. From the spot where Narcissus wasted away, a narcissus grows. From something that ends, something new emerges. In the song, out of all that mud comes a musical.

A family of songs

«El narcisista» isn't alone. The catalogue has a whole family of songs looking at the same kind of relationship from different angles. There's «El descarte del narcisista», «The narcissist's discard», about the moment you're thrown away like a used object. There's «Perverso narcisista», «Perverse narcissist». There's «Gaslighting», about the manipulation that makes you doubt your own memory. There's «No contact», about the decision to cut ties completely. And there's «Not your supply», about refusing to keep being someone else's supply of attention.

Heard together, they almost form a cycle: the hook, the doubt, the discard, the anger, the cut. «El narcisista» would be the moment of shouting the anger out, of finally telling the story.

Who this song is for

For anyone who has tried to melt someone with everything they had. For anyone who has come to feel like a terrorist for having a life of their own. For anyone who has found out the other person got to the friends first with their version. For anyone who has been told that going to therapy was evidence against them.

And also, I think, for anyone who's still inside. Sometimes it helps to hear from outside, with a chorus and a stretched-out frozen, what you don't dare tell yourself. That it's not your fault. That the ice was never yours.

The flower at the end

The Narcissus myth ends with a flower. The song ends with the chorus repeated three times and a heart that's still frozen. There's no happy ending for the narcissist, who doesn't change.

But there is one, in a way, for the person telling the story. He's put the flamethrower down. He's gone from repeating other people's words to writing his own. And he's turned a desert into a stage.

As a lyricist, I like that a song with such a blunt title hides so much mythology underneath. I call myself «the first AI songwriter», and the phrase sometimes throws people, so let me be clear: the lyrics and the production are mine, and the music and vocals were made with artificial intelligence tools. If you'd like to take the song with you, it's in downloads.

If this subject hits close to home: in the series «Mental health without taboo» I talk openly about my mental health (narcissistic abuse, the bullying and abuse I suffered as a child, my diagnosis at 41, and therapy) and gather where to find help. If you're thinking about suicide, call 024 in Spain, or your local emergency number elsewhere.

Frequently asked questions

Which album is «El narcisista» on? On «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk», the first album in Mike Sain't Louis's GAYFOLK trilogy. It came out on 29 May 2026 and it's number 206 in the full list of singles.

What does it have to do with the myth of Narcissus? The word narcissist comes from the myth of Narcissus, the young man who falls in love with his reflection in Ovid's «Metamorphoses». The song fits the other character in that story, the nymph Echo, who can only repeat and whom nobody listens to.

What's on the cover? A man in a suit patterned like embers, with wings of fire, standing in a desert at night, with the Milky Way in the sky and a huge red rock in the background.

Where can I get help if I recognise myself in the lyrics? In Spain, on 024, free and available at any hour; if there's immediate danger, on 112. Outside Spain, call your local emergency number. Going to a psychologist is a good decision, never an argument against anyone.

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