I Laughed First and Understood Later: An Afternoon With the Break-Up Songs of Mike Sain't Louis

MADRID, 25 October 2026 — I pressed play expecting to be entertained and ended up taking notes on grief. That is the short version of an afternoon spent with the catalogue of Mike Sain't Louis, the Madrid indie alternative artist who calls himself "the first AI singer-songwriter". The longer version involves a rollercoaster, a dance floor and a lesson that Irish readers will recognise: that sometimes the funniest line in the room is the truest one.

The rollercoaster, the first time round

The first song on my list was "Montaña rusa", Spanish for rollercoaster. It opens by declaring that today is a rollercoaster day and then says the word "montaña rusa" again and again until the last vowel stretches into something between a wail and a fairground scream. I laughed. It is genuinely funny, in the way a friend is funny when they act out their own disaster for you at the kitchen table.

Then I read the lyric, which sits beside every song on his website, and stopped laughing quite so freely. The narrator is trying to hold it together at all hours, but the muse is dying. He can't stop crying because, unlike the other person, he really did love him — up until three days ago, as the lyric shrugs. By the end the muse is not only dying but has gone mute.

That last image is the one that stayed with me. A songwriter whose inspiration falls silent after a break-up, telling you about it in a chorus designed to make you giggle. The joke is the delivery system. The pain is the cargo.

How the songs are made, briefly

It helps to know what I was listening to. Mike writes every lyric himself. The music and the vocal performance are produced with artificial intelligence, using Suno as a production and arrangement tool, which he directs version after version until one fits. The press photograph shows him in a recording studio, a mixing desk and a microphone behind him. It is a neat summary of his method: the microphone is part of the furniture, but the words are his.

When we spoke, he was clear about where the humour comes from. "The machine can do 'funny' if you ask it," he told me. "What it gives you back is office-birthday-card funny. The humour I care about aims at something: an ex, a prejudice, myself. Aiming needs someone who knows where everything is."

The dance floor, second time round

The second song was "No Contact", and here the joke changes shape. It is a Spanglish club track, bright and defiant, about cutting off a narcissistic ex completely. The narrator wakes up feeling free, closes doors, says goodbye to the drama and declares himself the queen, done with trauma.

There are lines that made me grin — "I'm too hot pa' tu comeback" is going straight into my vocabulary — and a farewell to the "narci" that works as a chant. But tucked into the verses is something you don't often hear in dance music: "Mi therapist me ha ayudado". My therapist has helped me. Gaslighting is named and refused. The tears he gave are traded for the beat.

I played it twice. The first time it was a party. The second time it was a recovery plan you can dance to.

What the laughter is for

Mike has spoken publicly about turning years of relationships with narcissistic partners into songs, with professional help, so that people who have lived through psychological abuse feel seen and believed. Listening to these two tracks back to back, I understood why so much of that work arrives dressed as comedy.

"If I told you straight that I'd been destroyed, you'd look away," he said. "If I make you laugh first, you stay for the next line. Humour isn't me avoiding the truth. It's me holding the door so you'll come in and hear it."

Why it speaks to Irish listeners

Ireland has a long tradition of telling the hardest stories with a straight face and a punchline, from the pub to the stage to the kitchen. There is also a growing openness here around mental health and around queer lives that, a generation ago, were not spoken of at all. Mike's songs sit right at that crossroads. You don't need fluent Spanish: "No Contact" is half in English, and the lyrics on his site make the rest easy to follow.

Listen and download

Both songs can be streamed and downloaded free at https://mikesaintlouis.com, like the rest of his catalogue of 273 singles, each with its full lyric. His music is also on Spotify, Deezer and other major platforms. More than 280 music videos accompany the releases, and the project is anchored by the GAYFOLK trilogy — "Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado GAYFOLK", "Ojalá se pudiera viajar a GAYFOLK" and "El día de la liberación" — a journey to a planet where everyone can live as they are.

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis is a Madrid-based indie alternative artist, lyricist, composer, producer and art director, and the founder and CEO of his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS. Through PLANETA GAYFOLK, built over roughly two years, he writes queer, uncensored, camp and often very funny songs about love, heartbreak, ex-boyfriends, nosy neighbours, liberation and mental health, in Spanish and also in English, French and Portuguese. "Tan Cateto" went viral on TikTok in 2024 and brought many new listeners to his work.

Press contact

Mike Sain't Louis — MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS (independent label) Email: info@mikesaintlouis.com Website: https://mikesaintlouis.com Instagram: @planetagayfolk