High (David Hallyday song)

"High" is a 1988 song recorded by French artist David Hallyday. It was the second of the four singles from his debut studio album True Cool. Released in November 1988, the song was a hit in France, becoming David Hallyday's first number-one single.

Song information

The song was composed by Lisa Catherine Cohen and the music composed by the singer himself. As for the rest of the album, lyrics are in English-language. The music video was shot in a church, Hallyday playing the organ, while a chorus composed of women chanted 'high' during the refrains. With this vigorous song, Hallyday presents "a musical style at the joint of Californian rock and pop".

In France, the single debuted on the singles chart at #45 on November 19, 1988, climbed quickly and entered the top ten in its fourth week. It topped the chart for five consecutive weeks, then almost didn't stop to drop on the chart and totaled 15 weeks in the top ten and 23 weeks in the top 50. Although it was not certified by the SNEP, the French certifier, its sales made the song the 440th best-selling single of all time in France. The song was the most successful from the album True Cool and the second one in Hallyday's career, behind "Tu ne m'as pas laissé le temps".

High (The Blue Nile album)

High is the fourth studio album by Scottish band The Blue Nile, released on 30 August 2004 on Sanctuary Records. A single, "I Would Never", was released one week prior to the album: a second song, "She Saw the World", was made available as a promotional single, but never released officially.

"Soul Boy" had already been recorded by former Spice Girl Melanie C for her album Reason the previous year.

Critical reception

The album received generally favourable reviews, with many critics considering High to be a stronger album than their previous effort Peace at Last. AllMusic said "the Blue Nile have returned with a more balanced album [than Peace at Last] and Buchanan is broken-hearted again, thank the stars. He's been struggling with fatigue and illness and as selfish and inconsiderate as it sounds, it's brought the spark back to his writing... given the time to sink in, the album fits well in their canon."The Guardian believed that with High "the emotional commitment of Peace at Last is combined with the observational detachment of the earlier work... In pop, most people do their best work within five or six years. How extraordinary, then, that after more than two decades of activity, the Blue Nile remain on course, their range expanded, their focus more refined, unshaken in their determination to proceed at their own measured pace."

High (Knut Anders Sørum song)

"High" was the Norwegian entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 2004, performed in English by Knut Anders Sørum.

The song is a dramatic ballad, with Sørum expressing his desire to bring an unnamed person "high". The lyrics suggest that this person has been beset by problems, and that Sørum believes he can go some way to curing them.

As Norway had finished the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 in the top 10, the song was pre-qualified for the final. Here, it was performed third, following Austria's Tie Break with "Du bist" and preceding France's Jonatan Cerrada with "À chaque pas". At the close of voting, it had received 3 points, placing 24th (last) in a field of 24, thus requiring Norway to qualify through the semi-final at the next Contest.

The low score, and long wait before Norway scored any points at all, led Australian commentator Des Mangan to jokingly offer money for anyone prepared to vote for the country. Initially, this was "a thousand bucks", later climbing to "ten thousand bucks and my house". Mangan explained during this commentary that he did not want Norway to further extend its unwanted record of failing to record a point on the most occasions.

Lolita (term)

Lolita was the nickname of one of the principal characters in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. Lolita's actual name was Dolores, with whom the narrator, Humbert Humbert, develops a sexual obsession. In the book itself, "Lolita" is specifically Humbert's nickname for Dolores. Nevertheless, "Lolita" and "loli" has come to be used as a general reference to a seductive or sexually attractive young woman.

In the marketing of pornography, lolita is used to refer to a young girl, frequently one who has only recently reached the age of consent, or appears to be younger than the age of consent.

Etymology & Related Terms

Nymphet

A nymphet is a sexually attractive girl, or young woman. The first recorded use of the term "nymphet", defined by The Century Dictionary as "a little nymph", was by Drayton in Poly-Olbion I. xi. Argt. 171 (1612): "Of the nymphets sporting there In Wyrrall, and in Delamere."

In Lolita, "nymphet" was used to describe the 9- to 14-year-old girls to whom the protagonist is attracted, the archetypal nymphet being the character of Dolores Haze. Nabokov, in the voice of his narrator Humbert, first describes these nymphets in the following passage:

Lolita (play)

Lolita is a play adapted by Edward Albee from Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name. The troubled production opened on Broadway on March 19, 1981 after 31 previews and closed after only 12 performances.

Frank Rich in his New York Times review wondered why the play even opened after "weeks of delays" as it was "the kind of embarrassment that audiences do not quickly forget or forgive." Rich said the least of its sins were incompetence, being boring, and trashing a literary masterpiece. "What sets Lolita apart from ordinary failures is its abject mean-spiritedness," he wrote. "For all this play's babbling about love, it is rank with indiscriminate – and decidedly unearned – hate."

Ten years earlier, John Barry and Alan Jay Lerner's musical Lolita, My Love was a bomb, closing during tryouts in Boston. (Albee's Lolita also played in Boston before its Broadway launch.) Critics had scored the play, saying that the lack of Nabokov's authorial voice made the musical salacious. Albee put Nabokov on stage in his play, but it did not help.

Lolita (trop jeune pour aimer)

"Lolita (trop jeune pour aimer)" (meaning "Lolita (Too Young to Love)") is the third single from Celine Dion's album Incognito, released in October 1987 in Quebec, Canada.

The song was composed by Jean-Alain Roussel and the lyrics were written by Luc Plamondon. The song references Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and the lyrics describe a young woman who insists that she is not "too young" for love. According to Dion, "When I saw what Luc had written, I was bowled over. Like Eddy, Luc had explored my inner life. What he had written was so close to me that I couldn't help being really unsettled by it." Dion said the song described her love for her manager and future husband René Angélil, "The first time I sang the words to 'Lolita,' I was in front of René, and I sang it to arouse him."

The single was released with "Ma chambre" as B-side. "Lolita (trop jeune pour aimer)" was very successful reaching number 1 in Quebec for two weeks. It entered the chart on October 3, 1987 and spent twenty two weeks on it.