Unforgettable! Whitney HOUSTON with Serge Gainsbourg I am speaking, I am speaking drunk English 50/50
I Said, I want to fuck her [HOUSTON]
Plastered. And so, at the front of her career, finally leaving the mean streets of Phili, she makes it to France and her first foreign language performance, then interview with the, impossible to dislike Michel Drucker
who guides her through alternative translations for the sake of humanity, and placates as well as Sissy could've, the most outrageously composed, cool Whitney Houston, that I dare anyone in the room to deny took that trolling with a aplomb and showbiz class. To those who do not know Serge -- please Google him -- and feast your brains out, and then, just know that this is at the end of a very, possibly, the very, most unlikely Polish Holocaust Survivor with grandmother to immigrate to France and become the dismemberment of French Swingin' 60s Paris Yeah Yeah movement that ignited the world, making his career one of the greatest second acts in the history of Pop Music. Remaking himself into himself, a louche, crass, debauche, declasse, frotager, 5 AM O'Clock shadow-man about Paris with the likes of Brigitte Bardot, and after a hundred more, marrying Jane Birken (Ouais. She designed your purse).
it's Lolita
When Lana Del Rey first arrived on the music scene, she described her image as "Lolita got lost in the 'hood." She was referring to the title character of Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita - the subject of the third installment of our Literature in Lyrics series. Because the story is told from the perspective of Lolita's sexually frustrated stepfather, the title character has earned the reputation of a teenage temptress who drives men wild.
Most artists, like Del Rey and Katy Perry, perpetuate the taboo image of Lolita rather than the reality of her being an underage victim of sexual abuse.
Let's take a look at Lolita's musical legacy.
Light of my life, fire in my loins Be a good baby, do what I want Light of my life, fire in my loins Gimme them gold coins - "Off To The Races" by Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey ran with the narrative on her debut album, Born To Die, even calling one of the tracks "Lolita." But it's on "Off To The Races" that she meets her Humbert Humbert. She describes him as a bad man who's a tough thief with "a soul as sweet as blood red jam," while her own is "tar black." The chorus even recalls the opening line of the novel: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."
So over summer something changed I started reading Seventeen And shaving my legs And I studied Lolita religiously - "One Of The Boys" by Katy Perry
On her 2008 song "One Of The Boys," Katy Perry uses Lolita as a blueprint to get guys – albeit guys her own age. Like Del Rey, she overlooks the abuse theme and equates the story with the sexual awakening of a young girl hitting puberty.
Even the album cover pays tribute to this interpretation, with Perry emulating the character (specifically Sue Lyon's provocative performance in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation). The photo captures the singer, wearing a polka-dotted crop top and teeny, high-waisted shorts, lounging on a lawn chair in front of a white-picket fence.
Perry's fascination with Lolita doesn't end there. In 2014, she posed in lingerie for a Twitter selfie, adding she was "feeling v Lolita rn." She also named her brand of false eyelashes "Lovely Lolita" after the character. "I have studied this woman's every move," she explained. "I found her a most fascinating creature... she was young and innocent but had a bit of a sex kitten in her and knew exactly how to use it."
I'm your Lolita, La Femme Nikita When we're together, you'll love me forever You're my possession, I'm your obsession Don't tell me never, you'll love me forever - "Lolita" by The Veronicas
Love Story Stage 3 Stupid and rich, clever and poor What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? You can say that she was beautiful and intelligent.
The Jungle Book 1 Mowgli's brothers One very warm evening in the Seeonee hills in Southern India, Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest.
Next to him lay Mother Wolf, with their four cubs beside her.
It's time to look for food,' said Father Wolf, and he stood up to leave the cave.
Good luck,' said a voice.
It was the jackal, Tabaqui, who eats everything and anything, even pieces of old clothes from the villages.
The wolves of India do not like him, because he runs around making trouble and telling bad stories about them.
Shere Khan, the tiger, is coming to look for food here,' said Tabaqui.
He can't,' cried Father Wolf.
By the Law of the Jungle he must tell us first, before he comes here to hunt.' Shere Khan has a bad leg, so he can kill only cows.
In the village near him the people are angry.
Sherlock Holmes Short Stories Level 2 The Speckled Band 1 Helen's Story At the time of this story, I was still living at my friend Sherlock Holmes's flat in Baker Street in London.
Very early one morning, a young woman, dressed in black, came to see us.
She looked tired and unhappy, and her face was very white.
'I'm afraid! Afraid of death, Mr Holmes!' she cried.
'Please help me! I'm not thirty yet and look at my grey hair! I'm so afraid!' 'Just sit down and tell us your story,' said Holmes kindly.
'My name is Helen Stoner,' she began, 'and I live with my stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, near a village in the country.
His family was once very rich, but they had no money when my stepfather was born.
So he studied to be a doctor, and went out to India.
He met and married my mother there, when my sister Julia and I were very young.
Our father was dead, you see.' 'Your mother had some money, perhaps?' asked Sherlock Holmes.
'Oh yes, mother had a lot of money, so my stepfather wasn't poor any more.' 'Tell me more about him, Miss Stoner,' said Holmes.
'Well, he's a violent man.
In India he once got angry with his Indian servant and killed him! He had to go to prison because of that, and then we all came back to England.
Mother died in an accident eight years ago.
So my stepfather got all her money, but if Julia or I marry, he must pay us £250 every year.' 'And now you live with him in the country,' said Holmes.
"To us, Lolita, is about power play," Jessica explained. "It's the power play between genders and age groups, as well as people's perception of taboo, boundaries, what is acceptable and what a Lolita is: She's a bad-ass and she's on a mission. She wants to destroy something, either her own perception of what's right and wrong or everyone else's. She wants to prove something to herself."It's no use, he sees her He starts to shake and cough Just like the old man in That book by Nabokov - "Don't Stand So Close To Me" by the PoliceThe Police's 1980 hit "Don't Stand So Close To Me" is about a teacher who becomes attracted to one of his students and tries to resist the temptation of an affair. When she comes near him, he becomes flustered and feels like "the old man in that book by Nabokov." Although Sting claims the tune isn't autobiographical, he did work as a teacher for a few years and had "been through the business of having 15-year-old girls fancying me – and me really fancying them! How I kept my hands off them I don't know..."
We'll climb the mountains before we meet the sea The rain will stop eventually I'll drive slow across black ice And you'll be safe to rest your eyes - "To the Key of Evergreen" by The Devil Loves Prada
Mike Hranica of The Devil Wears Prada interprets the relationship between Humbert and Lolita a bit differently than modern readers. The band's song "To The Key Of Evergreen" was inspired by the Nabokov novel, which Hranica says is "controversial given it's based on a love affair between an older man and a younger girl, but the aching sorrow in their love is absolutely stunning and magical."
On the 2016 track from Transit Blues, we meet the couple on a cross-country road trip as they weather the elements, like rain and black ice, to reach their destination, much like the obstacles they have to face to be together. In the book, the on-the-road adventure includes Humbert dragging the girl to various motels across the country and bribing her for sexual favors. How romantic.
With a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue Dissolve the nerves that have just begun - "True" by Spandau Ballet
- In the early '80s, Spandau Ballet guitarist Gary Kemp was crushing hard on Clare Grogan, the singer from the Scottish new wave band Altered Images. He poured his feelings about the unrequited romance into the 1983 ballad "True," which is peppered with references to Lolita, a novel Grogan gave him. The plea to "take your seaside arms and write the next line" paraphrases Humbert's observation of Lolita's "seaside limbs."
Another is "with a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue." During Humbert's first hotel encounter with Lolita, he laces her ice cream with sleeping pills in an attempt to rape her. But the specific scene that inspired Kemp is much later in the novel. Lolita finally escapes her stepfather's grasp... into the arms of a pornographer who tries to force her to star in his films. When Humbert finds out, he shows up at the man's mansion with "a pill on my tongue" to steady his nerves before he shoots him to death. Kemp's intentions in the song weren't so sinister; he just needed a little something to keep his cool around Grogan.