A little while after Bruce Springsteen had begun recording the demos that would become his album Tunnel of Love in early 1987, the producer Chuck Plotkin travelled to New Jersey to listen to the songs. “Oh God, that boy’s in trouble,” he thought. The songs were sombre and desolate, consumed with the difficulties of love. That is not so unusual, in itself, for a pop record. The reason Springsteen was in trouble was that he was, pretty much, a newlywed. He had married Julianne Phillips in May 1985 and had already discovered that he was not a man at all ready for marriage.
Despite its title, “Tougher Than the Rest”, the lead single from Tunnel of Love, was anything but tough: it was a stately, gravitas-laden declaration, not of love, but of being prepared for love. In retrospect, it sounds as if Springsteen was trying to convince himself that being married was the right thing: “The road is dark,” he sang, “and it’s a thin, thin line / But I want you to know I’ll walk it for you anytime.”
“Tougher Than the Rest” is a song about falling in love as an adult, when the heart has already been bruised. The narrator is alone in a bar on a Saturday night, when he spots someone else in the same situation. Neither is under any illusions — “So somebody ran out / Left somebody’s heart in a mess” — and they understand they have to be hard. To be “rough enough for love”, they must be tougher than the rest. But those are just words. This is really a song about vulnerability.
Perhaps that’s why this is a song so often — and so beautifully — covered by women. When men — often country singers, including Travis Trittand Chris LeDoux— take it on, it’s the tougher bit that gets accentuated. By contrast, the women tend to emphasise the fear and tenderness at the heart of the song, among them Angel Olsen, Shawn Colvin, Emmylou Harrisand the Scottish indiepop group Camera Obscura.
“It's supposed to be a ‘bloke song’, and it's by Bruce, so it feels iconoclastic in some way to sing it,” says Tracey Thorn, who sang “Tougher Than the Rest” with Everything But the Girlin 1992. “Perhaps women are instinctively drawn to the way it deconstructs the conventional notion of masculinity. Its narrative says true toughness is nothing to do with being macho, but is all about loyalty, and emotional maturity; being able to see that ‘the road is dark’ and giving reassurance that you'll be able to cope with that. It's a song in which the singer is honest about their own slightly shop-soiled weariness — ‘Well it ain't no secret, I’ve been around a time or two’ — but suspects this quality might be understood and shared — ‘I don’t know babe, maybe you’ve been around too.’ This is an honest and open thing to say, and it takes strength to lay yourself bare like this. So ultimately, what the song says is that tough and vulnerable are the same thing.”
But to get to what might be the real meaning of the song, it’s worth going back to Springsteen’s story. Before he married Phillips, those close to him suspected he was going to enter a relationship with Patti Scialfa, a New Jersey musician who joined the E Street Band for the Born in the USA tour. On the Tunnel of Love tour, which began in 1988, just as Springsteen’s marriage was ending, Springsteen and Scialfa sang “Tougher Than the Rest” as a duet, a version of which was recorded and released. In the live clip for the song, the pair stand a few yards apart, but staring into each other’s eyes for almost the whole time. The musical performance — with the whole E Street Band, plus an expanded horn section — is streets ahead of the album version (the most compelling studio version might be the German DJ Martin Vogel’s disco edit). But it’s the visible crackle between the two singers that makes the song, and still does when they perform it live. No longer was it Springsteen trying to convince himself about Phillips; it was him realising the truth about Scialfa. They have now been married for 26 years: tougher than the rest, indeed.
Is Springsteen’s version of ‘Tougher Than the Rest’ the best? Let us know in the comments below.
‘The Life of a Song: The fascinating stories behind 50 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: (P) 1987 Bruce Springsteen, Warner Bros., Nashville Catalog, Jagjaguwar, Universal Music Group International, Reprise, 4AD, Chrysalis Records
Picture credit: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images