We Still Whisper About Abuse in Gay Relationships. Mike Sain't Louis Has Chosen Grief in Paris and Filth at a Funeral Instead

Madrid, 25 October 2026

There is a polite way to talk about psychological abuse, and most of us have learned it. Soft lighting, a calm voice, a helpline at the end. It is well meant and it is necessary. It is also, I suspect, why so many people who have lived through it never recognise themselves in it. Abuse is rarely tasteful. Neither, it turns out, is surviving it.

That is why I keep returning to the work of Mike Sain't Louis, an indie alternative artist based in Madrid who introduces himself as “the first AI singer-songwriter”. He writes every lyric himself; the music and vocal performance are generated with artificial intelligence, which he uses as a production and arrangement tool and directs version by version. Over roughly two years he has put out 273 singles and more than 280 music videos under the name PLANETA GAYFOLK, on his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS. No record company, no intermediaries, no one to tell him to tone it down.

He has also said, publicly and plainly, what much of this catalogue is for. With professional help, he is turning years of relationships with narcissistic partners into songs, to make narcissistic and psychological abuse visible, along with the marks it leaves on mental health, so that the people living through it feel seen and believed.

Two of those songs could hardly be further apart. That, I would argue, is the point.

The trip that never happened

«Paris restera gris», “Paris will stay grey”, is the restrained one. In Mike's own note, it is about the end of a gay relationship of many years and a trip to Paris that was planned a thousand times and never taken. The suitcases that never left the wardrobe. The hotels looked up on Google Maps that became imaginary ruins.

Paris here is not the city of love. It is the stage for an absence. He describes the song as the exact point at which love stops hurting but still weighs on you: looking back without bitterness, but with an elegant sadness. Not a song of hate or revenge, he writes, but a letter that was never sent.

When I asked him about it, he put it more simply: “People think the damage is the shouting. Sometimes the damage is a suitcase you never got to pack. Years of plans that only one of you believed in.”

This is a kind of harm we almost never name. Not a bruise, not a scene. Just a long life of deferral, of promises that keep the other person waiting. A song that sits quietly with that, refusing melodrama, is doing something many campaigns cannot: it is describing the thing as it actually feels.

The funeral nobody will forget

And then there is «Eso es lefa». I am not going to translate the title in a family publication; Spanish speakers will already be wincing, or laughing. The song begins in a place that is almost unbearably sad:

Nadie hablará de mí cuando haya muerto (“Nobody will talk about me when I'm dead”)

It lists who might remember him: a couple of friends, blood family, his mother, his father, the good-natured last partner, a nosy neighbour. Then it swerves, violently, into a grotesque fantasy about the ex at the funeral, and a punchline delivered by that same neighbour that I will leave you to discover for yourself.

It is crude. It is meant to be. Explicit lyrics are part of Mike's work, and I would defend this one precisely because of where it starts. The fear of being forgotten, of having been erased by someone who told you that you were the problem, is real. The obscene joke is what you do with that fear once you are strong enough to laugh at it.

“After years of being careful with someone who never was careful with me,” he told me, “I wanted one song where I wasn't careful at all. If it shocks people, good. Silence never shocked anyone.”

Why both registers matter

Here is my argument. Visibility is not only about saying the word “abuse” out loud. It is about offering people more than one way to recognise their own story. Some will find it in a grey Paris they never reached. Others will only let themselves see it through a joke so filthy it takes the shame out of the room.

PLANETA GAYFOLK does both, because it was built to. It is brash, uncensored queer alternative pop, ranging from electropop to Spanish copla and from ballads to alt-pop, in Spanish and also in English, French and Portuguese. Its spine is the GAYFOLK trilogy, three albums conceived as a single journey: «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK», «Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK» and «El día de la liberación», heading for a planet where everyone can live exactly as they are.

Why British listeners should care

Talking about emotional abuse in same-sex relationships is still awkward almost everywhere, Britain included. A Spanish-language artist will not fix that. But these songs offer a register we rarely hear here: grief and outrage, side by side, unapologetic. And everything is free, which removes the last excuse.

Listen and download

Every song by Mike Sain't Louis is free to stream and download at [mikesaintlouis.com](https://mikesaintlouis.com), each with its full lyrics. The catalogue is also on Spotify, Deezer and the main platforms. Instagram: @planetagayfolk.

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis is a Madrid-based indie alternative artist who calls himself “the first AI singer-songwriter”. Lyricist, composer, music producer, artistic director and CEO of his label MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, he writes about love, exes, nosy neighbours, queer life in Spain, liberation and mental health. His song «Tan Cateto» went viral on TikTok in 2024.

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