Irlanda ·
Not psychologists, not friends, not boyfriends: I went looking for the songs that hold Mike Sain't Louis up on the bad days
A listener's notes on anxiety, sadness and the word “breathe” in the catalogue of the Madrid-based indie alternative artist who calls himself “the first AI singer-songwriter”, from the club-floor defiance of “Beat My Post-Traumatic Stress” to the four walls of his saddest lyric
Madrid, 25 October 2026. The list is what got me. Psychologists, friends, brothers, psychiatrists, doctors, boyfriends. Then paediatricians, vets, fasting and, needless to say, any honest politician. Everything that is supposed to help you, crossed out one after another. And then, on the other side of the list, the chorus:
“¡La música me está salvando! / ¡La música me está elevando!”
Music is saving me. Music is lifting me up. That's “La música me está salvando”, a song by Mike Sain't Louis, and I've had it on repeat for longer than I'd like to admit on a wet Sunday in October.
If you haven't come across him, Mike is an indie alternative artist based in Madrid who calls himself “the first AI singer-songwriter”. He writes every lyric himself, and he's the producer, artistic director and boss of his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS. The music and the vocal performance are made with artificial intelligence, which he treats as a production tool: he doesn't sing, and the voices are AI-generated. The words and the direction are his. In about two years he's put out 273 singles and more than 280 music videos under the name PLANETA GAYFOLK.
This week he published an essay on his blog about the songs in his catalogue that deal with anxiety, sadness, a body that remembers and a room you don't feel like leaving.
A song with its usual cheek
First, a confession: “La música me está salvando” isn't a solemn song. Mike himself describes it as one of his typical ones, with an insult aimed at the ex and plenty of bite. But the chorus says something that is true for a lot of people, and he admits it turns up again and again in his catalogue, sometimes with a joke and sometimes without one. Some days weigh too much. And on those days, what holds you up isn't always what you were told would hold you up.
He's careful to say his essay isn't advice. He isn't a doctor or a psychologist, and neither are his songs. It's a text about what the lyrics tell.
What the body remembers
The song with the plainest title is “Beat My Post-Traumatic Stress”. On its page, Mike describes it as a song about surviving what the body still remembers, about walking through fear, anxiety and silence and turning all of that into rhythm.
The idea that the body remembers stayed with me. You can decide to forget something, but the body doesn't obey. The song's answer isn't to keep still. It's to dance. The English title is almost an order: put a beat under it and win.
There's one line on that page I keep rereading: “every synth carries a scar, every drum hit is a heartbeat I thought I'd lost.” A heartbeat you thought you'd lost. That's what music does when it works, he writes: it gives you back something you thought was gone. It doesn't erase the scar. It makes it sound. He sums the song up as his way of saying: I'm still here.
The club as a refuge
Two more phrases from that page go beyond Mike himself. The first calls the song the electronic, night-time side of the GAYFOLK universe, the side of the club as a refuge, which for many queer people has literally been the place where they could finally breathe. Anyone who grew up queer somewhere it wasn't safe to be knows exactly what he means.
The second phrase is the dedication: to anyone who has survived something that doesn't show up in photos. We live showing photos, he writes. What really marked us almost never appears in them.
I'm writing this from Ireland, a long way from Madrid, and none of that needs translating. Most of us know someone for whom a crowded dance floor did more on a bad night than any lecture ever could.
Four walls
Not every song makes it to the club. Some stay in the bedroom. Mike calls “Entre cuatro paredes” (“Between four walls”) probably the saddest lyric in his catalogue, and it is: not a single joke. It opens with someone who can't find a reason to hope, doesn't want to leave the room, has no strength and no motivation. Then it goes on, line by line, through a list of things that aren't there. No answers. No colours. No warmth. No end to the tunnel. Sadness told as absence: not what hurts, but what's missing.
There's a phrase in it that he has used for another post: always set apart among so many people. The loneliness that isn't about being alone. The loneliness of being surrounded and not being with anyone.
What matters, he insists, is how that song ends, and the word that keeps coming back in his lyrics when things start to improve: breathe. I won't spoil it. Go and listen.
Why I'm passing this on
Mike has spoken openly about why he writes the way he does: with professional support, he turns years of relationships with narcissistic partners into songs, so that people who have lived through psychological abuse feel seen and believed. Knowing that, the crossed-out list at the start of “La música me está salvando” reads differently. It's not a rejection of help. It's an honest account of a day when nothing else was getting through.
The photo at the top of this post shows him in a dressing room, sequinned lapels, mirror lights glowing behind him, looking away from the camera. It's the right picture for these songs: the sparkle on the outside, and something quieter going on underneath.
Listen for free
Every song by Mike Sain't Louis can be streamed and downloaded free at https://mikesaintlouis.com, each with its lyrics. You'll also find him on Spotify, Deezer and the main streaming platforms. His full essay (in Spanish) is on his blog: https://mikesaintlouis.com/blog/la-musica-me-esta-salvando-ansiedad-tristeza-y-respiro-en-mis-letras
About Mike Sain't Louis
Mike Sain't Louis is a Madrid-based indie alternative artist and the self-described “first AI singer-songwriter”: lyricist, composer, producer and CEO of his own label. His PLANETA GAYFOLK project gathers queer alternative pop, from electropop to ballad and Spanish copla, into the trilogy “Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK”, “Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK” and “El día de la liberación”. He writes in Spanish and also in English, French and Portuguese, and many listeners first met him in 2024, when “Tan Cateto” went viral on TikTok.
Contact
Mike Sain't Louis Email: info@mikesaintlouis.com Web: https://mikesaintlouis.com Instagram: @planetagayfolk