Sadly, not about the hairstyles of blue collar America…
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[4.00]
Anthony Easton: I like these kinds of country songs about communities pulling together to approach an ongoing problem, and it’s good they’re finally acknowledging the recession is happening (five years after it started). Some of the details, including the line about selling the car, are efficiently haunting. But the rest of it is political grandstanding and emotional manipulation.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Adkins’ burr of a baritone would on first listen be the no-brainer means by which he applies sentiment to a rural narrative, and it might work if the guitars didn’t settle into such a perfunctory chug and the tropes weren’t so hackneyed if not incorrect. The price of gas might be up but so is the stock market, which means trouble for the tough people whose bootstraps Adkins wants pulled. He’s not the Great Commoner — he’s the Great Commonizer, insistent on reducing his audience to the redneck stereotypes in which “talking heads on CNN” traffic.
[2]
Josh Langhoff: “Trace Adkins says he wasn’t trying to make a political statement when he performed… ‘Tough People Do’ at the Republican National Convention…” Before I accuse covert RNC operatives of chloroforming Trace Adkins, I’ll assume he just doesn’t know what the word “political” means. Frequently in public discourse, even among the CNN pundits Adkins rightly dismisses, people are either too lazy or scared to examine large-scale problems in all their complexity, so they use words like “political” or “bootstraps” or “sold my car” and assume they’re saying something. (Compare to the Coup, also carless but far more realistic: “Catchin’ buses be gettin’ me to work late / And you know that slow down my pay rate.”) That’s why “Tough People Do” makes me wanna smack it. Even though its facts are basically correct, it thinks it can make everything better by calling platitudes “headlines,” ignoring huge swaths of the country, and selling that ignorance by making it gorgeous. And really, this song is gorgeous. You half expect to see Randy Newman in the credits, so rarely do assholes find themselves in songs this pretty.
[7]
Ian Mathers: All those tough people “fightin’ like they don’t know how to lose”? That “like” is important, because in real life lots of them actually lose, every day, regardless of how tough and good and hard-working they are. This America-is-a-meritocracy-on-a-level-playing-field bullshit is helping precisely none of them. And nothing in the dunderheaded plod of the song redeems the contents on musical grounds, either, so this is precisely the kind of filler shit that keeps a lot of people thinking all modern pop country is dumb and boring, when plenty of it plainly isn’t; so Adkins isn’t helping there either.
[1]
Ramzi Awn: Adkins’ voice does what you need it to, but the chorus lays it on a little thick. By-the-book is not a bad look, and “Tough People Do” would have benefited from simplifying things even more. Still, the catchphrase works.
[6]
Alex Ostroff: When I’ve enjoyed Adkins’ songs before, it’s been due to the weight of his deep voice, which is heavy and reliable even by country’s standards. But here it’s paired with a plodding tempo and endless strings of clichés; even harmonies that split the difference between Mutt Lange and church choir can’t make “Tough People Do” genuinely inspiring.
[2]
Edward Okulicz: Big booming voice, overblown, leaden song. Even Springsteen couldn’t make this one soar.
[4]
Iain Mew: The guitar takes the of insistence of Coldplay’s “In My Place” riff and goes back to source to meld it with the shimmer of Ride. Coupled with the organ bubbling up and the power of Adkins’ choir-backed certainty, it’s almost enough to stop me from wondering what happens to all the not tough people who presumably don’t last.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: Was this sponsored by Rhonda Byrne?
[3]