We put the mermaids in a display case. My video lets them swim again

Madrid, 25 October 2026

By Mike Sain't Louis

Mermaids have been swimming through sailors' stories for centuries. They were the perfect explanation for everything the sea kept to itself: the ships that never came home, the songs the wind seemed to carry at night, the shapes moving under the water that nobody could name. A mermaid was the sea with a face. The ocean turned into someone you could talk to, or someone you had better run from.

Then, little by little, we tamed them. First in books, then in films, then on key rings, beach towels and the little figurines you find in the windows of harbour gift shops. The mermaid stopped being frightening and started being sweet. But somewhere along the way she lost something important: her freedom. She went from the open sea to a display case.

I'm Mike Sain't Louis. I call myself the first AI singer-songwriter, which in plain terms means this: I write every lyric, I compose and produce, and I run my own independent label, MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, while the music and the vocal performance are made with artificial intelligence. Over roughly two years I have built PLANETA GAYFOLK out of songs and videos, 273 singles and more than 280 clips, and this week I want to take you down to its coastline to look for its mermaids.

A title that denies what it shows

My guide is the video for “En Canarias no existen las sirenas” – “There are no mermaids in the Canaries”. It went up on YouTube on a Saturday at the end of summer, 20 September 2025. It runs for three minutes and twenty-eight seconds, and the song belongs to “El día de la liberación”, the third album of my GAYFOLK trilogy, the one that ends the journey with the door left open.

Here is the joke, and the point. The title insists that mermaids do not exist, and the video is full of them. Mermaids on the seabed, mermaids in cages, mermaids in aquariums, mermaids laid out on the ice of a fish market. The denial works exactly backwards: the more you say they are not there, the more of them turn up.

I find that contradiction deeply human. Think how often we are told that something does not exist precisely because someone would rather not see it. Abuse doesn't exist if there are no bruises. Sadness doesn't exist if you're smiling. People like you don't exist in this village, on this island, in this family.

And yet here we are, swimming.

That line matters to me. For years, with professional help, I have been turning relationships with narcissistic partners into songs, because psychological abuse is one of those things people insist isn't there. Writing about mermaids is a lighter way into the same question: who decides what is real?

A flamingo on the jetty

The video opens with heat and coloured plastic. On a wooden jetty reaching out into a deep blue sea, a few people are holding a huge inflatable flamingo, shocking pink, neck curled. Later the same flamingo is floating beside a platform and someone climbs onto it, laughing, in water so clear you can see the bottom.

This is the holiday sea. The travel-agent sea, the one in the photos you send home to make people jealous. A sea with no mystery, basically a very big swimming pool. And it is right there, in that postcard water, that the mermaids begin to appear. Beneath the brochure, the other sea is still down there.

The banana that sank

One of the first underwater shots is pure comedy. Beneath the surface, in turquoise water cut through with sunbeams, there floats a giant inflatable banana, bright yellow with a dark tip. A figure in a wetsuit clings to it and kicks, as if the banana were a toy submarine taking them on an outing.

I adore that banana. It is the most absurd object you could possibly put at the bottom of the sea, and that is exactly why it works. On my planet, the ridiculous and the poetic swim together. You don't have to choose between laughing and being moved: a yellow banana drifting through shafts of light is a gag and a beautiful image at the same time.

I also like what it says without saying it. A beach inflatable is made to float on top, where everyone can see it. This one has sunk. It has gone down to where the things nobody shows are kept. And down there, suddenly, it has become mysterious.

A door shaped like the sun

There is a golden beach you enter through a wooden arch crowned with a carved sun, sharp rays around a round face. On either side grow dry, wind-hardened plants, the kind that put up with salt air, and in the distance a small group of people waits by the shoreline. I read that arch as a border: a doorway between the holiday beach and the stranger shore of the stories.

Why I'm writing this for British readers

Britain is an island nation with its own long shelf of sea stories, so you hardly need me to explain the pull of a mermaid. What I'd ask is that you watch the video with that old sense of mystery switched back on – and with a sense of humour. My songs are mostly in Spanish, though I also write in English, French and Portuguese, and many people first found me in 2024 when “Tan Cateto” went viral on TikTok. This one needs no translation: the pictures do the talking.

Where to listen

“En Canarias no existen las sirenas” and my whole catalogue, with the lyrics to every song, can be streamed and downloaded free at https://mikesaintlouis.com. You'll also find the music on Spotify, Deezer and the main platforms. The full piece, in Spanish, is on my blog: https://mikesaintlouis.com/blog/una-cola-de-escamas-en-una-jaula-bajo-el-mar-un-platano-hinchable-y-un-camarote-inundado-las-sirenas-de-planeta-gayfolk

About Mike Sain't Louis

Mike Sain't Louis is an alternative indie artist based in Madrid and, in his own words, “the first AI singer-songwriter”. Lyricist, composer, music producer, artistic director and CEO of the independent label MIKE SAIN'T LOUIS, he works with no record company and no middlemen, using AI for the music and vocals while the words and the vision are his. His GAYFOLK trilogy imagines a journey to a planet where everyone can live exactly as they are, in queer alt-pop that is cheeky, camp and uncensored, ranging from electropop to copla and ballads.

Press contact

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