I Tried Listening the Way He Does: an Afternoon With the Dictation Test of Mike Sain't Louis, Madrid's Self-Styled First AI Singer-Songwriter

MADRID / LONDON, 25 October 2026. I put the kettle on, closed the laptop's other tabs and pressed play with my eyes shut. That was the instruction I had set myself after reading how Mike Sain't Louis listens to his own work: no lyric sheet, no screen, just the ear. If I could write the words down from the sound alone, the song had passed. If I couldn't, according to his own rule, it wouldn't have been released.

Mike Sain't Louis is an alternative indie artist based in Madrid who calls himself "the first AI singer-songwriter". He writes every lyric; the music and the vocal performance are generated with artificial intelligence, which he uses as a production and arrangement tool. He is also the composer, producer, artistic director and CEO of his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS. No record company, no intermediaries. Over roughly two years he has put out 273 singles and more than 280 music videos as PLANETA GAYFOLK.

What interested me was not the software but the step that comes after it.

One lyric, dozens of songs

When Mike takes a finished lyric to the tool he works with, it hands back versions: sometimes a few, sometimes dozens, each with its own melody, tempo and way of landing a phrase. Only one survives. He has compared himself to the old proofreaders at publishing houses, who never wrote the book but were responsible for every typo that reached print.

"The first listen I do with the lyric in front of me, like following a score," he explains. "The second one, if the take is still alive, I do blind. If the joke gets lost, or an ex's name goes blurry, I move on. A pretty melody that swallows the words is no use to me."

He is not asking for newsreader diction. The title, the rhyme that closes a line, the word carrying the punchline: those have to arrive whole. The rest is allowed to breathe. Music, in his phrase, should serve the lyric the way a good suit serves the person wearing it.

First test: «El castigo más duro»

I started with the hardest one. «El castigo más duro» ("The Harshest Punishment") opens with words that "have thorns" and tear the mouth on the way out, and moves through a chest pain that won't let the narrator breathe. Then comes a line so specific it made me laugh out loud before it hurt: seven years of a relationship to be wiped from the iPhone, Google Photos, Movistar Cloud and OneDrive.

That list is exactly the sort of thing the dictation test protects. Brand names are slippery; sung badly, they turn into mush. Here every one landed. I could have typed the line without looking.

The song's centre is plainer. It names what the narrator calls the cruellest punishment a narcissist can apply:

el hacerte creer que no vales nada

Making you believe you are worth nothing, not even a message. The phrase repeats until it stops sounding like an accusation and starts sounding like a diagnosis of the silence itself. Mike has said publicly that, with professional help, he turns years of relationships with narcissistic partners into songs, to give visibility to psychological abuse and the marks it leaves on mental health, and so that people living through it feel seen and believed. On a blind listen, that intention is impossible to miss.

Second test: «Manual de escape de un narci»

Next, the opposite temperature. «Manual de escape de un narci» ("Escape Manual From a Narcissist") presents itself as a recipe. Don't react. Don't explain. Block the number. Open the door if he threatens to leave. The chorus promises that the worst punishment for the other person is watching you shine.

This one is built for clarity: short rules, hard rhymes, a closing shout of "game over". Then, unexpectedly, the track dissolves into a softer bilingual coda about a frozen heart, sliding between Spanish and English. With eyes closed it felt like stepping out of a lecture hall into cold air. I wrote it all down without a single gap.

"A manual that nobody can understand is just noise with good intentions," Mike says. "If someone is going to listen to it at two in the morning, needing it, the words have to reach them."

What the ear is really editing

By the end of the afternoon I understood that the dictation test is not about pronunciation. It is about priority. In a catalog that runs from electropop to copla, from alternative pop to ballads, in Spanish and also in English, French or Portuguese, the constant is that the words come first. They are funny, camp and uncensored, sometimes explicit, about love, exes, nosy neighbours, queer life in Spain and, again and again, liberation. Many listeners discovered him in 2024, when «Tan Cateto» went viral on TikTok.

"The tool can give me a beautiful song," he says. "Choosing the one that tells the truth is my job."

Why it matters to listeners in the UK

British audiences have long rewarded lyric-first pop with a dry sense of humour and a dark edge. Mike's work sits comfortably in that tradition, even in another language, and his transparency about AI offers a useful, concrete case in a debate that is often all heat and no detail.

Where to listen

The full catalog, including the GAYFOLK trilogy — Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK, Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK and El día de la liberación — is free to stream and download, with lyrics, at [mikesaintlouis.com](https://mikesaintlouis.com). It is also on Spotify, Deezer and other major platforms.

About Mike Sain't Louis

Writer of every word and director of every take, Mike Sain't Louis is a Madrid alternative indie artist presenting himself as the first AI singer-songwriter. His project PLANETA GAYFOLK, released through his own label MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, imagines a planet where everyone can live as they are.

Press contact

info@mikesaintlouis.com https://mikesaintlouis.com Instagram: @planetagayfolk