Every Street Has a Theatre, and the Exes Always Get the Best Seats

Madrid, 25 October 2026. Mike Sain't Louis is an indie alternative artist based in Madrid who calls himself "the first AI singer-songwriter". He writes every lyric of his project PLANETA GAYFOLK; the music and the vocals are generated with artificial intelligence under his direction. This is his column.

The stalls are always full

I live in a city where nothing is private for long. In my part of Madrid, a break-up has an audience before it has an ending. The woman on the second floor knows before your mother does. The man at the bar knows before your best friend. By the time you've deleted the photos, the whole street has already formed an opinion, and most of them are wrong.

The photo with this piece shows me in a theatre, and I chose it on purpose. That's what a neighbourhood is when your love life goes wrong: a small theatre with very cheap seats, where everyone has a view and nobody has bought a ticket.

For about two years I've been writing songs about exactly that. Not about grand tragic love, but about the ordinary, slightly ridiculous scenes that make up a life in a city: the ex, the gossip, the queue, the lie that travels faster than you. There are 273 singles now, and more than 280 music videos. I write every word. The music and the vocal performance come from an AI tool that I direct, choosing and discarding versions until one says what I meant. I don't sing. I write, and I decide.

The queue outside the concert

Take "El concierto de Ismael Serrano". Ismael Serrano is a Spanish singer-songwriter with a devoted following, and in my song someone promised to go to his concert with me. I waited in the queue from early in the morning. I ended up inside on my own, listening to "Caperucita", one of his songs, and shouting at the absent party: "¡Eres un tirano!" You're a tyrant.

It's a comic premise, and I wanted it to be. But the verses go somewhere else. They describe someone who falls in love at speed: married within a month, new in-laws, all very well accompanied, and, I predict, separated by next year. And then the part I really wrote the song for. I feel sorry for the new one. He's excited now, believing the stories he's been told about me, the invented diagnoses and the rest of the rumour.

That is neighbourhood life in a nutshell. The people who hurt you rarely just leave. They rewrite you on their way out, and they tell the new version to anyone who'll listen.

The discard

"El descarte del narcisista" is the darker sister. In the language people use to talk about narcissistic abuse, the "discard" is the moment when someone who once said they loved you drops you with total indifference, as if you'd been a one-night thing to use and throw away. The song is addressed to another person who went through it: someone crying alone, who believed the lies, who feels that no one supports them and that even their own people are lying. And the song answers with three words I'd put on a banner if I could: "¡No estás sola!" You're not alone.

I'll be honest about why I write this. With professional help, I've been turning years of relationships with narcissistic partners into music. I do it to make narcissistic and psychological abuse visible, along with the marks it leaves on mental health, and so that whoever is living through it feels seen and believed. Believed is the important word. The gossip on the second floor will always have a version. I want the person in the middle to have one too.

Why I laugh about it

People sometimes ask why so much of my work is funny, if the subject is so serious. Because humour is how you survive the audience. My style is cheeky, uncensored queer alternative pop with a lot of camp in it, swinging from electropop to copla, Spain's great melodramatic song tradition, and on to ballads. I have a song called "La vecina cotilla", the nosy neighbour, in which the narrator admits he has become exactly that, watching the gorgeous man across the way. Gossip isn't only something done to us. We all do it. Admitting that is half the joke and half the cure.

Plenty of people found me in 2024, when "Tan Cateto" went viral on TikTok, and I think that song worked for the same reason: a stranger judging a couple holding hands is street theatre too, and everyone has seen that play.

A word to British readers

I don't know your streets, so I won't pretend to. But I suspect that wherever there are terraces, shared stairwells and a local where everybody knows your business, these songs will make sense. The language is Spanish, mostly; the lyrics are posted next to every song, and the situations need very little translation. An ex who fails to turn up is an ex who fails to turn up, in Madrid or anywhere else.

Where to find the songs

Everything I've released can be streamed and downloaded free of charge at mikesaintlouis.com, each song with its lyrics. There's nothing to buy. The catalogue is also on Spotify, Deezer and the main platforms, and the project lives on Instagram as @planetagayfolk.

It's all part of the GAYFOLK trilogy, three albums designed as one journey: "Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK", "Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK" and "El día de la liberación". The destination is a planet where everyone can live exactly as they are. Even the neighbours.

About the author

Mike Sain't Louis is a Madrid-based indie alternative artist and lyricist, composer, producer, art director and CEO of his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS. He calls himself "the first AI singer-songwriter" and writes songs about exes, gossip and liberation with no record company in between.

Press contact: info@mikesaintlouis.com · https://mikesaintlouis.com · Instagram @planetagayfolk