Tuesday, 12 July 2011

Billy Ocean 'When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going'

Chart Peak: 1 (4 weeks)
YouTube

Charted at No. 28 on 21st January 1986 - had sped to No. 1 by 4th February where it stayed for 4 weeks.
'Go And Get Stuffed', as my Mum used to call it, was the lead single from the file Jewel Of The Nile,  which I never saw but was aware of thanks to the famous (though seemingly absent from YouTube) video starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. Had I been in America, though, I might have been more ignorant since that video was reportedly banned from the telly over there due to the actors not being members of the musicians union. However, I can neither confirm nor deny this: neither can I confirm Wikipedia's claim that the song was co-written by somebody called Willy Head - he's not credited on the LP label, that's for sure.

It's a song I liked at the time, but about the best I can say for it now is that it does what it's designed for. There's something rather good-natured about Billy Ocean that makes a lot of his records more likeable than they really deserved to be, and this is case in point - fun for a few minutes but ultimately uninteresting.

Also appearing on: Now 11
Available on: The Ultimate Collection

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