Green, gold and black on a crumbling wall: how Madrid's Mike Sain't Louis built 'Feel That High' as a tribute to Bob Marley

Madrid, 25 October 2026

There is an English word that has slipped into everyday Spanish almost without asking permission: high. In Madrid you can be high, or go about high, and everyone knows what it usually means. But people also use it for an afternoon when everything goes right, for a gig where you forget to check your phone, for the minute after a run when your body feels borrowed. Spanish has its own word for that, subidón, and it is just as generous.

Mike Sain't Louis, an indie alternative artist based in Madrid who presents himself as "the first AI singer-songwriter", built a whole track around that ambiguity. It is called "Feel That High", and in a new post on his blog he walks through each of the rooms the title opens, without slamming any door shut.

A cover that says where it comes from

The artwork is almost entirely a flag. Jamaica's colours fill the background: the yellow saltire running corner to corner, green triangles above and below, black ones at the sides. It is not freshly pressed. The paint is cracked and faded, as if someone had painted it on a brick wall and left it for years in the sun and rain.

In front stands a young man, shown from the waist up. A tall, messy quiff, a trimmed beard, small earrings, tattoos climbing his neck and running down his arms. He wears an open crochet shirt, the kind that has crept back into every shop window, striped vertically in yellow, green, red and black. He looks straight at the camera, head slightly tilted, face serious.

To the left, the title, painted in an acid, almost aggressive green that looks like fresh spray paint. The letters drip at the bottom and wisps of grey smoke curl off their edges. Beneath, the artist's name in yellow. "It's a very direct cover," he writes. "It doesn't hide where it comes from or who it's waving at."

Working only with what is on the table

Mike Sain't Louis writes all of his own lyrics. The music and the vocal performance are generated with artificial intelligence, which he uses as a production and arranging tool; the words, the idea and the artistic direction are his. He is also careful about what he says publicly about his own songs.

The lyrics of "Feel That High" have not yet been published on his website, so the post quotes no lines from it, neither copied nor imagined. He also refuses to lean on YouTube's automatic subtitles, which, he notes drily, invent more than they hear when there is a reggae groove underneath.

What he does have is first-hand material. The cover. The English title. The date he uploaded the video to his channel, 12 June 2026, alongside other songs from the same record. The album it belongs to, "El día de la liberación", the third instalment of his GAYFOLK trilogy. And above all, the caption on the video itself, which presents the song plainly as a tribute to Bob Marley. "That word, tribute, is what gives me permission to write the rest," he explains.

The man behind the tribute

The post then turns to Marley himself. Robert Nesta Marley was born on 6 February 1945 in Nine Mile, a village in the parish of Saint Ann, in rural Jamaica. He grew up between the countryside and Trench Town, a poor district of Kingston, where he formed with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer the group that would become The Wailers. He died on 11 May 1981 in Miami, aged only 36, from a melanoma that had appeared on his toe.

In that short time, Mike Sain't Louis writes, Marley turned a neighbourhood music into a global language. "Exodus", released in 1977, was named album of the century by Time magazine in 1999, and "Legend", the compilation released in 1984, has stayed in the charts for decades.

But what interests him most is not sales. It is a concert. On 22 April 1978, at the National Stadium in Kingston, in the middle of a violent rivalry between Jamaica's two main parties, Marley brought both opposing leaders, Michael Manley and Edward Seaga, on stage and joined their hands above his head. It was called the One Love Peace Concert. Around a year and a half earlier, in December 1976, gunmen had entered his home and shot him. Two days later he played a free concert in the city anyway.

"That's a high too," the artist writes. "Getting on stage when the sensible thing would be to hide."

Why it matters to UK listeners

Few places outside the Caribbean have absorbed Jamaican music as deeply as Britain, where reggae shaped sound systems, carnivals and several generations of bands. "Feel That High" arrives in that conversation from an unexpected angle: a queer, independent artist in Madrid paying his respects with a battered flag, an open question and a refusal to pretend he knows more than he does.

A planet built in two years

The track belongs to PLANETA GAYFOLK, a catalogue of 273 singles and more than 280 music videos created over roughly two years. Its trilogy follows a journey to a planet where everyone can live exactly as they are, moving between electropop, copla, alternative pop and ballads, in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese. Many listeners first found him in 2024, when "Tan Cateto" went viral on TikTok.

Everything can be streamed and downloaded free, with lyrics where published, at https://mikesaintlouis.com. His music is also on Spotify, Deezer and other major platforms. The full post is on his blog: https://mikesaintlouis.com/blog/subidones-que-no-se-fuman-feel-that-high-la-bandera-de-jamaica-y-el-homenaje-a-bob-marley

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis is a Madrid-based indie alternative artist and self-described "first AI singer-songwriter". A lyricist, composer, music producer and artistic director, he also runs his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, with no record company and no middlemen. His songs are queer, funny, uncensored and often personal, dealing with love, heartbreak, exes, nosy neighbours and mental health.

Press contact

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