Name It Before You Fill It: Mike Sain't Louis's Practical Guide to a Spanish-Language Queer Playlist That Doesn't Sound Like Every Other One

Madrid, 25 October 2026 – Everyone knows the Spanish-language queer playlist. It plays at every birthday, every pre-drinks and every gay bar, and it has done for years: the same anthems, two or three summer hits, a ballad to close the night. It works. But, as Mike Sain't Louis puts it, play it three times in a month and it starts to feel like furniture.

The Madrid-based indie alternative artist, who introduces himself as "the first AI singer-songwriter", has just published a practical guide on his blog to building a playlist that actually says something. He is careful to call them habits rather than rules. Here is his method, step by step, for Australian listeners who want to go beyond the obvious.

Step one: start with a question, not a genre

The most common mistake, he says, is starting from a label such as "gay music", "LGBT pop" or "Pride". Those labels are so big that the playlist turns into a junk drawer. Instead, he begins with a small, concrete question. Who is it for? What moment is it for? How should the listener feel when the last track ends?

"A playlist for cooking with your boyfriend on a Sunday is nothing like one for the drive to the beach," he writes. A list for the day after a break-up is different from one for the day you finally stop missing him. The smaller the question, the better the playlist.

Try this: before adding a single song, give the playlist a name. A good name holds you to account. His example is a list called "To forget Javi". Once it has that title, there is no room for a happy love song, however much you like it.

Step two: mix the decades without apologising

Queer pop in Spanish did not start yesterday. There is copla, the dramatic Spanish song tradition; there is light pop from the sixties and seventies; there is eighties and nineties pop that the community adopted even though nobody wrote it with them in mind. And there is everything being made now, much of it far from the big radio stations.

Mike Sain't Louis likes a list that jumps between all of it without complexes: a dramatic copla followed by something electronic from this year, a village-fiesta tune after an alternative track almost nobody knows. "The contrast makes you hear both songs better," he notes. It also tells a story: how the community spent decades borrowing songs before it began to have its own.

Try this: you don't need every artist to be LGBT. Part of queer tradition is reading between the lines of songs that were never meant for us. But he recommends that at least half the list comes from people speaking from the inside.

Step three: cross the Atlantic

A playlist built only from Spain, or only from one country in the Americas, ends up lopsided. Queer Spanish is spoken in many accents, and each place has its own way of laughing, crying and flirting. Mixing accents gives a list a texture you can't get any other way.

Try this: his trick is to alternate, one song from here, one from there. Not as a rigid rule, since sometimes two songs from the same country call to each other, but as a habit. The result, he says, sounds like a bar where people from all over have ended up at the same table, which is the closest thing he knows to a community.

Step four: the running order is almost everything

People underestimate order. A list of the best songs in the world on shuffle is worse than a decent list in the right sequence. He treats the first track as a front door: it should invite you in without shouting. The second can lift. Around the middle, something unexpected. The ending needs care, because it is what people remember.

Try this: listen to the transitions. Two songs in very different keys back to back can grate; twenty minutes at the same energy gets boring. Go up and down, like a long conversation. And keep it manageable. Four hundred songs is a warehouse. Between twenty and forty, in his view, is where a playlist still has personality.

Step five: where his own songs would go

It would be odd, he admits, to write all this without mentioning his own catalogue, so he offers a few suggestions with a warning: "It's my list, not yours."

• "La dieta del cucurucho" belongs on a summer playlist, if only for the title, which already smells of ice cream and terraces. Handy for an Australian summer.
• "No quiero otro novio cojín" and "La vecina cotilla" suit the getting-ready-with-friends moment, when everyone is doing their hair and nobody can find the keys.
• "Mi novio de Albacete" and "Mitad Venezuela, mitad Pakistán" play with where people come from, and he would like to see them on a list about loves from far away.
• "La primera drag" also earns a spot in his imagined lists.

Why this matters for Australian listeners

For Australian listeners who build their own playlists, a Spanish-language queer list built with this method is a way in to music you might not otherwise stumble on, and Mike Sain't Louis's songs, written in Spanish and also in English, French and Portuguese, are easy to slot alongside what you already play.

Where to listen and download

All of Mike Sain't Louis's music streams and downloads free at https://mikesaintlouis.com, with the lyrics for every song. It is also on Spotify, Deezer and the main platforms. The full guide is on his blog: https://mikesaintlouis.com/blog/como-armar-una-playlist-queer-en-espanol-sin-que-parezca-la-de-siempre

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis is a Madrid-based indie alternative artist who calls himself "the first AI singer-songwriter". He writes every lyric, composes and produces, and runs his own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, as artistic director and CEO, with no record company and no middlemen. The music and vocal performances are generated with artificial intelligence; the words, ideas and creative direction are his. Over roughly two years he has released 273 singles and more than 280 music videos under the PLANETA GAYFOLK banner, organised as a trilogy about travelling to a planet where everyone can live as they are. His cheeky, uncensored queer pop ranges from electropop to copla and ballads. Many listeners found him in 2024, when "Tan Cateto" went viral on TikTok.

Media contact

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