Seven titles to start listening to me

When someone tells me they want to hear something of mine and don't know where to start, I have a problem. I've released 273 singles in roughly two years. Recommending one is like asking someone to pick a dish from a twenty-page menu: they end up ordering the first thing they see, or they leave.

So I've done something about it. I've picked seven titles. They aren't necessarily the best, because I don't know which ones are the best and I change my mind every week. They're seven doors. And since I don't want to spoil the songs, I'll only talk about what each title suggests before you press play. What happens after that is your business.

«Tan Cateto»

I'm starting here because this is where a lot of people came in, through TikTok. It would be silly to hide it.

What interests me in the title is the word «tan», "so". Without it, «cateto» (a country bumpkin, a yokel) is a label. With it, it's a measurement. It's no longer about whether someone is a bumpkin or not, but about how much. And that opens the door to exaggeration, to tenderness, to complaint, to whatever you want to imagine. A single syllable that turns an insult into a scale.

If you've never heard anything of mine, this is the least risky place to begin. It has already passed the test of an audience that didn't know me.

«No quiero otro novio cojín»

Notice the «otro», the "another". That's the detail I care about in the title. It doesn't say "I don't want a cushion boyfriend". It says "another". Which means there's already been one, or several. It's a title with a record. Before the song even starts, you know whoever's talking has experience in the matter and has had enough.

I like starting with titles like this, ones that come with a past built in. They spare you the introductions.

«La vecina cotilla»

This title needs nobody from outside a block of flats to make sense of it. Everyone has had a nosy neighbour. Or has been one, which also happens and nobody ever admits.

What it suggests to me is a point of view. A song with that title could be about the neighbour, or about what the neighbour sees. Those are two very different songs, and the title doesn't tell you which one it is. That seems to me a good way to start listening: with a small doubt.

If you live in a building with an inner courtyard, the title will already have brought someone to mind. Purely out of empathy.

«La dieta del cucurucho»

I've written about this title elsewhere, so I'll say something different. What catches my eye now is the article. «La» dieta, "the" diet. Not "a" diet. As if it were a well-known method, with its own name, the kind that turns up in the magazines at the hairdresser's. That tone of something official applied to something as unofficial as an ice-cream cone is what makes me laugh.

I recommend it for a day when you need to take yourself less seriously. It works better in summer, although I'm making that up.

«Mi novio de Albacete»

The possessive and the city. Those two things do all the work. «Mi», "my", says there's a relationship. «De Albacete» says there's a place of origin, and with it an accent, some customs, a family that might ask questions over Sunday lunch.

For anyone listening to me from the Americas, Albacete is probably an exotic name, and I love that. For anyone listening from Spain, it's a name loaded with national-joke baggage, the small inland town everybody teases. The same title sounds different depending on where you are. I didn't plan it, but I'm grateful for it.

«Mitad Venezuela, mitad Pakistán»

This is the longest title on the list and the one with the most geography. Two countries that have almost nothing in common, together in one person, or in one couple, or at one table. I don't know which of the three you picture. That ambiguity is the charm.

I like recommending it to people outside Spain, because it breaks the idea that my songs only talk about Madrid. My main audience is in Europe and Latin America, and this title says so without saying it.

«La primera drag»

I'm ending with this one because «primera», "first", is a word that weighs on me. It could be the first drag queen someone ever saw. The first one who dared in a particular place. Or the first time you yourself climbed into a pair of heels. Each reading changes the whole song, and the title doesn't choose for you.

It's the most serious title of the seven, sequins and all. I leave it for last because I think you understand it better once you've been through the others.

How to use this list

You don't need to go in order. This isn't the trilogy, which does ask for order. This is a tasting menu: you pick from here and there and see what you like.

My advice, if you ask for it, is to choose the title that intrigued you most in this piece, listen to it once and then read the lyrics. On my website every song has its own page with the music video, the full lyrics and the Spotify link. If you're still hungry after that, there's a search box and a lyrics section from A to Z to keep pulling the thread.

And if none of the seven speaks to you, that's useful information too. Maybe my thing isn't your thing. That's fine. There's a lot of music in the world.

All seven, and the other 266, are at mikesaintlouis.com.