Billy Ocean – When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going
#quotefromthe80s
Darlin', I'll climb any mountain
Darlin', I'll do anything
Ooh, can I touch you?
And do the things that lovers do
#BillyOcean #WhenTheGoingGetsTough
Among the many peculiarities of the 80s, there is also an artist who released a song the same day for two years in a row. Exactly one year after the release of “Loverboy”, on November 15, 1985, Billy Ocean released one of his most famous songs, “When the going gets tough (the tough get going)”. The British singer who left native Trinidad with the family just before the indipendence, however, was a particular character for many other reasons.
I actually think the choice of the day to get the song out wasn’t, in this case, up to him alone. The song was part of the soundtrack of a movie, so I think a lot of other factors drove the release date. However, in Europe the song was actually released in January, but in the United States it had to help the movie in the run-up to the Christmas 1985.
Do you remember the movie? It was “The Jewel of the Nile”, the sequel (less successful and much more criticized) of “Romancing the Stone”, which also had a more famous director, Robert Zemeckis, while the sequel was directed by Lewis Teague.
The protagonists… well, to remember them you just have to see the video, because it is impossible not to spot and not remember the beautiful Kathleen Turner, the great Michael Douglas and the immense Danny De Vito dressed entirely in white acting as backup singers while Billy Ocean and his group perform the song.
In the UK this will also create a bit of confusion because the three American actors were not registered on the national register of artists, and therefore the video was blocked as they did not have the right to sing the song. Actually, I think they’re just acting in the video. Danny De Vito’s famous sax solo was also an act, of course a real musician performed the solo.
Billy Ocean was probably at the top of his career at the time, and a few months earlier, on that famous July 13, he had the satisfaction of singing two songs at Live Aid in New York’s JFK Stadium. Among the many things that make the figure of Billy Ocean special, there is also a certain passion for rather long titles, even if in this case he made a mistake.
In fact, in his career, he reached number one in the United States with songs with eight words in the title, such as “Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run)”, “There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry), and “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car”. Here, however, he went too far, because this song has a nine-word title, and in fact he had to settle for the second position.
Billy Ocean on Wikipedia
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