I'm nobody's spokesperson: singing LGBT life in the first person without speaking for the whole community

GAYFOLK has the word "gay" inside it. Not hidden, not in small print: in capitals and right at the start, the way you put your name on a letterbox. I chose it on purpose, and I don't regret it. But a name like that has a side effect that took me a while to notice. When a project is called that, some people assume it speaks for the whole community. That every song is an official statement. That behind it there's some kind of spokesperson with a microphone and a lectern.

There isn't. Behind it there's a gay man from Madrid who writes lyrics, turns them into songs with artificial intelligence tools and releases them on his own label. That's all. And I think it matters to say so out loud, not to dodge responsibility, but for exactly the opposite reason: taking what I do seriously starts with knowing where I'm doing it from.

This piece is about that border. About what I can tell in the first person, what I can only listen to, and why I believe a community as large and as diverse as the LGBT one doesn't need a spokesperson, but lots of different voices, each saying its own thing.

"Gay" in the name is not a job title

There's a very human temptation, when you finally feel part of something, to want to speak for that something. You get moved, you feel accompanied, and suddenly your "I" turns into "we" without you noticing. I've caught it in myself while writing. I start by telling a specific afternoon, a specific argument, a message I didn't answer, and by the third verse I'm about to write "it happens to all of us".

And no, it doesn't happen to all of us. It happened to me. Maybe to others too, and I hope the song helps them. But the difference between "it happened to me" and "it happens to us" is huge. The first sentence is testimony. The second is a claim about millions of people I've never met.

When I say I'm nobody's spokesperson, I don't say it with detachment. I say it with respect. The LGBT community isn't a club with a single opinion. There are lesbians, gay men, bisexual, trans, intersex and non-binary people. There are people who live in a big city and people who live in a village of two hundred. There are those who came out at fifteen and those who did at fifty, or who haven't been able to yet. Some are believers and some aren't, some vote one way and some the other. Pretending that one singer-songwriter sums all that up would be impossible, and a bit ridiculous too.

So the "gay" in GAYFOLK is not a job title. It's a description. It says where I write from, not who I represent.

What I can tell: one man, one city and two stories that lasted too long

What's mine to tell is my own story, and that's plenty. I'm a gay man who lives and works in Madrid. For twenty years I was trapped in two relationships with narcissistic partners, and when I finally understood what had happened, songs became my way of telling my side. I explain it more calmly on my biography page, and I won't repeat all of it here.

That material is the heart of many of my lyrics. Love, heartbreak, queer life in Spain the way I've lived it: the streets I know, the bars I imagine, the conversations I've had and the ones I wish I'd had. When I write about that, I write with authority, because nobody told me about it. I lived it.

That doesn't mean every song is a page from my diary. The names in the lyrics are invented characters, something Planeta Gayfolk states in writing in its editorial policy. The experience is mine; the characters are fiction. I like that combination because it lets me tell the truth without pointing at anyone. And because it forces me to be honest about the starting point: the emotion has to be real, even if the name of the ex in the song isn't.

So when I'm asked to talk about gay life, what I can offer is a gay life. Mine, with its humour, its wounds and its quirks. Not the most typical one, nor the most representative. Just the one I know.

Lyrics that aren't entirely mine: writing about other letters without taking their voice

That said, my songs aren't only about gay men. Other letters of the acronym show up, other lives, other ways of being part of the rainbow. And there the care has to be twice as great.

There's a line that slipped almost unthinkingly into «La dieta del cucurrucho», a jealousy comedy from the first album of the trilogy:

me da igual, si es chica chico trans o neutral

("I don't care if it's a girl, a boy, trans or neutral.") I wrote it inside an absurd fantasy, as just another joke. But later I realised that line, spoken by a character imagining his future child, said something I truly believe. I devoted a whole piece to it, about trans childhoods and the families who stand by them, and I wrote it knowing one thing: I'm not a trans person. I can say what I think as an ally, as someone from the same neighbourhood, but the experience of growing up trans is best told by those who have lived it.

Something similar happens with bisexuality. In «El anillo de casado» there's a narrator who talks about the "supposed heterosexuality" of a newly married man:

¿Y qué voy a hacer? Si me atrapa / cada día un poco más, su supuesta / heterosexualidad.

That line speaks from a character's spite, and that's exactly why I felt I had to stop and think about it in another piece on bi invisibility. Because it's one thing for a hurt narrator in a song to decide the other man is "really" gay, and quite another for me, as the author, to tell a bisexual person who they are. The character can get it wrong. I have a duty not to.

My rule, if I have one, is this: when I write about a life that isn't mine, the song can look at it, keep it company, celebrate it or even laugh with it. What it can't do is speak in its place.

The word marica and the permission I don't hand out

There's a word that turns up all over my lyrics: marica, the Spanish slur for a gay man. And its relatives. Maricón, mariposón, the Shakira marica, the sidereal marica, the chill marica. I already told in "Marica, with every letter" how a word that for a long time was used to single us out has ended up, in my songs, almost as a trophy. There's that ending of «Gaslighting» where the protagonist wins the fight and celebrates with an "I won maricón".

But I use that word about myself. I pick it up off the floor for myself. And I don't expect everyone to like it, or every gay man to feel comfortable with it. Some people heard it so often as an insult that they never want to hear it again, not even said with affection. I understand that completely. Reclaiming a word is a personal gesture, not a collective rule.

That's why I'd never say "we" have reclaimed the word marica. I have. Others have, in their own way. And others have decided to leave it where it was. All three are legitimate, and none of them needs my permission.

This seems to me a good example of what I mean by not being a spokesperson. If I were one, I'd have to decide which word represents us all. Since I'm not, I can do something more honest: use mine and let everyone use theirs.

Gay and an AI singer-songwriter: two labels and no flag

There's another reason this matters to me, and it has to do with how I make music. I present myself as the first AI singer-songwriter. I write every lyric and direct every song, and artificial intelligence is my production and arranging tool, used to create the music and the vocals. I say so openly and I don't hide it.

That has brought me criticism, and some of it comes in a curious mix. I wrote about it in the piece on the insults my music gets for being made with AI: sometimes the message starts by talking about AI and by the second sentence it's already talking about me being gay. The two labels stick to each other, and whoever wants to attack one takes advantage of the other.

That's precisely why I refuse to let either of them become someone else's flag. The fact that I use AI doesn't mean LGBT artists use AI, or that they agree with me. There are queer musicians who play every note with their own hands, who record in small studios with a lot of effort, and it's quite possible some of them distrust what I do. They have every right. If anyone read all of them through me, I'd be doing them a poor favour.

And the other way round: me being gay doesn't make my way of using AI "the gay way" of doing it. It's my way. Full stop. I'd rather be criticised for my own decisions than have a whole community criticised for something only I decided.

What «Tan Cateto» taught me about speaking loudly

In 2024, «Tan Cateto» went viral on TikTok. For someone who works alone, with a one-person label, that was something completely new. Suddenly a song of mine was reaching people who didn't know me at all, who had no idea who I was or where I came from.

Virality has something deceptive about it: it makes you feel that if lots of people listen to you, then you speak for lots of people. And that's not how it works. A song being shared a lot doesn't turn it into a manifesto. It just means more people found it funny, or it touched something in them, or it worked for a video. Each for their own reasons.

From that experience I kept one simple lesson: volume is not the same as representation. I can sing very loudly, I can reach far, and still be talking only about my own life. In fact, I think that's the only thing that lets me sing loudly without embarrassment.

A planet, not a headquarters

I've sometimes asked myself why I invented a planet. Why Planeta Gayfolk and not simply a singer-songwriter career under my own name. There are several answers, and one of them has to do with all this.

A planet is a place, not an institution. It has no president and no spokesperson. It has landscapes, characters, streets, beaches and dance floors. People arrive, wander around, stay in the corner they like and leave whenever they want. I build the planet, but I don't decide who lives there or how.

That planet is already big. There are 273 singles, the GAYFOLK trilogy and more than 280 music videos. There's electropop, copla and camp. There are songs in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese. There are funny lyrics, heartbreak lyrics, lyrics about mental health and, yes, sexually explicit lyrics too, because they're part of how I tell queer life without a filter. All of it fits because I don't have to ask any committee for permission to put it in.

And so that nobody is left out of that place for lack of money, all my music can be downloaded for free, with no sign-up. It isn't a spokesperson's gesture; it's a host's gesture. The difference matters to me. A spokesperson speaks in your name. A host opens the door and lets you do the talking.

There's a warning in one of my songs that I'm very fond of, the one in «Vas a escuchar un disco muy raro»:

Si vienes con prejuicios, échate a un lado.

("If you come with prejudice, step aside.") It's the closest thing the planet has to an admission rule. I don't ask you to belong to any particular letter, or to think like me. Only that you come without prejudice. The rest, everyone brings for themselves.

Talking about what hurts without turning it into an example

There's an area where this border is even more delicate: mental health. I talk openly about mine. At 41 I was diagnosed with major depression, social phobia, post-traumatic stress, avoidant personality disorder and anxiety, and a good psychologist is helping me keep going. It's all laid out in the "Mental health without taboo" series.

I know many LGBT people carry similar wounds. But my story isn't "the LGBT story of mental health". It's one story. When I tell it, I don't do it to say "this is what happens to all of us", but so that someone who recognises themselves in part of it knows they're not alone and that asking for help works. If you're going through a very hard time and you're in Spain, you can call 024, the suicide prevention line, and 112 in an emergency.

What I owe the community even if I don't speak in its name

Not being a spokesperson doesn't mean going it alone. I owe the LGBT community an enormous amount. I owe it the words that let me understand myself, the songs of other artists who dared before me, the spaces other people opened when opening them was dangerous. Nothing I do would exist without that road already walked by people I'll never meet.

That's why I think of my songs, as I wrote in "Songs as a community's diary", as loose entries in a collective diary. But a collective diary works precisely because each person writes their own page. If I wrote all of them, it wouldn't be the community's diary anymore. It would be my diary with a different title.

So my job is to write my page well. With honesty, with humour when there's some, with care when it hurts. And to leave room in the notebook for other voices to write theirs: lesbians, trans people, bisexuals, older people, kids who haven't told anyone yet. If one of them finds a song on Planeta Gayfolk that helps, it makes my day. If they find one that doesn't represent them, that's fine too. Representing them was never my intention. My intention was to tell my own story with the door open.

One microphone and lots of chairs

If I had to draw how I picture this project, I wouldn't draw someone at a lectern addressing a silent crowd. I'd draw a long table after a Sunday lunch, with a microphone in the middle and lots of chairs around it. I'm sitting in one of them. I've picked up the microphone for a while because I had something to say. When I'm done, I'll put it back in the middle of the table.

And whoever wants it can pick it up.