High Hopes is a show tune - pop song written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn and first popularized by Frank Sinatra, with Eddie Hodges, in the 1959 comedy A Hole in the Head. It was released as a June 5, 1959 single by Capitol and later appeared on Sinatra's 1961 album All the Way; the film version with Hodges used slightly different lyrics. The song describes two scenarios where animals achieve seemingly impossible feats - an ant moving a rubber tree plant and a ram punching a hole in a billion-kilowatt dam - and the chorus proclaims high, apple pie in the sky, hopes, which the song suggests are attainable. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 32nd Academy Awards and was nominated for a Grammy; the Sinatra single reached #30 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and #6 in the UK. A Kennedy campaign version with different lyrics was used for John F. Kennedy's 1960 campaign, and it has been covered by artists such as Sammy Davis Jr., Dinah Shore, Doris Day, and Bing Crosby, making it a lasting staple of American show tunes.
