Songoftheday 8/16/14 - I've got somethin' to tell I've got somethin to say, gonna put this dream in motion ain't nothin' gonna stand in my way...

Billy Ocean - "When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going"
from the albums Love Zone (1986) and Jewel Of The Nile (Original Soundtrack) (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's Song of the Day comes from Trinidadian singer Billy Ocean, who went from being a minor disco performer to a pop superstar with his Suddenly album, which gave him four top-40 pop hits in America, including the #1 "Caribbean Queen" and #2 follow-up "Loverboy". His next move was to record the theme song to the sequel to the hit Indiana Jones knock-off comedy Romancing The Stone called The Jewel Of The Nile, starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. The song, "When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going", was a brightly produced pop single written with the help of Robert "Mutt" Lange along with producers Barry Eastmond and Wayne Braithwaite. The video for the song had the film's three stars miming backup behind Ocean (causing the clip to be banned in the UK)....

"When The Going Gets Tough..." became Billy's fourth top-ten pop hit in America, reaching the runner-up spot in February of 1986. The single also climbed into the top ten on both the R&B (#6) and Adult Contemporary (#2) charts in Billboard magazine. It even made an appearance on the club play dance chart, peaking at #31. Internationally it was an even bigger success, becoming the singer's first and so-far only #1 in the United Kingdom, as well as topping the singles chart in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and others (the success of the movie surely helped).

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


In 1999, Irish vocal quintet Boyzone recorded a cover of the song for the annual "Red Nose Day" charity campaign for Comic Relief, and the record was one of the biggest of the series, reaching the #1 spot in the UK and made the year-end top-10...

Jessica Biel and Ben Barnes also recorded a cover of the song for their movie version of Neol Coward's Easy Virtue...

Back to Billy with a performance on QVC in 2010...

,,and from the "Rewind" concert a year later..