Songfacts®:

• "High Hopes" was one of the first songs written by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to make it to wax. They later became superproducers with hits for New Edition, Mary J. Blige, and most famously, Janet Jackson, but in 1982 they were members of The Time, a group created by Prince. Jam and Lewis couldn't do any writing or production in The Time because Prince handled it, so they made their own demos and shopped them around. One of them, "High Hopes," made its way to Ricky Sylvers, who was producing The S.O.S. Band, who had a big hit with "Take Your Time (Do It Right)" two years earlier. He recorded it with the band and included it on their third album, III, that year.
  
  Clarence Avant, who ran the group's label, Tabu Records, loved the song and brought Jam and Lewis in for a meeting. They played him their original demo, which was looser, with artistry over precision. Avant hired them to work on the group's next album, On The Rise, as both songwriters and producers. They ended up doing the three singles from the set: "Just Be Good To Me," "Tell Me If You Still Care," and "For Your Love." These songs got The S.O.S. Band back on track and showed what Jam and Lewis had to offer. They soon left The Time to focus on their writing and production work full time.
• Most S.O.S. Band band songs have lead vocals by Mary Davis, but "High Hopes" is sung by their multi-instrumentalist Abdul Ra'oof. That's because the song is written from a guy's perspective, which is how Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis wrote it. Lewis sang on their demo.
• Most of the songs called "High Hopes," including the standard made famous by Frank Sinatra, are uplifting tunes urging us on, but this one is kind of a downer. The singer's high hopes are dashed when he catches his girl cheating.