“'Lolita' inspires music semi-always. Here's one from the pedophile Humbert's perspective that's not tortured -- nay, it's Prince! So, why? And, wha? Like Moby-Dick and Hester Prynne, Lolita's a lit fig killed and elegized by pop. The book Lolita's advanced cunning and girlish tastes (read: crushin' on erudites + drinkin' soda) gave her serious means with misguided ends. Humbert loved lifelong; she read gauzy magz and snapped pink gum. One manipulated. But modern incarnations fixate on the gum. Sting & Zappa may write about the id-rific displacement issues and Promethean buggers of Humberts, but glam pop's got this novel renewed indefinitely. Katy Perry's Lola is also Humbert's (limited), but she's close. Perry manipulates, doesn't set her sights higher than the star topping a palm tree at X-mas, and though she knows what she's doing, does she? Prince's misreading sees Hum as Cpt. Hook/Peter Pan, as usual. The song is uncoverable, and other "un-" words. Why cite the novel at all?”

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