"'So What!' told ME, Miles Davis, what IT do (like *you)!"
Cette merde n'est rien de nouveau.
"Alors quoi" m'a dit Miles, ce que ça fait (comme * toi)!
Fuck! This shit.
On Malibu Beach, the beach boys eschew the sounds we made, Miles' 'Bitches Brew';
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."
par me *mrjyn
pour,
et de
*Utahna Faith
author,
mom,
farmer,
somewhere in the Middle West ...
DOWN ON THE FUCKING FARM!
buy her new fiction, wherever you may find her
In our Literature In Lyrics series, we look at how famous songwriters worked in song lyrics
it's Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
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
The Veronicas, an Australian pop duo made up of twin sisters Jessica and Lisa Origliasso, also see Lolita as having the upper hand in her relationship with Humbert. On their 2012 club banger "Lolita," the narrator views herself as a combination of Nabokov's nymphet and La Femme Nikita, the expert assassin who uses her beauty as one of her deadly weapons in the 1990 French film of the same name.
"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 Police
The 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.
