Songfacts®:

• Like "Eye of the Tiger" from Rocky III, this song was written for a popular '80s movie and inspired by a line of dialogue in the film. It's the theme song to the 1985 movie The Jewel Of The Nile, an adventure film in the spirit of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
  
  When the main characters in the film, Joan and Jack (played by Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas), are facing one of their many seemingly intractable challenges, Joan turns to Jack and says, "When the going gets tough, the tough... I don't know what the tough do."
  
  Billy Ocean used the proper phrase - "When the going get tough, the tough get going" - as the title and made the song about summoning up the courage to overcome obstacles. The movie did well at the box office and the song was a big hit, going to #1 in the UK and reaching #2 in America behind Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know."
• The Jewel Of The Nile is the sequel to the 1984 movie Romancing The Stone, which had a theme song by Eddy Grant called "Romancing The Stone" that was barely used in the movie. The soundtrack to that film wasn't released until years later, so the song appeared on Grant's album out of context from the film, where it didn't make a lot of sense. It was a minor hit but could have been a major hit if it was used in and promoted with the movie. Rumors are that studio executives essentially gave up on the film before it was released and were cutting their losses by scuttling the soundtrack, but then it exceeded expectations at the box office and had no musical tie-in.
  
  When it came time for the sequel, the movie studio didn't make the same mistake. "When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going" was promoted along with the film and issued on the soundtrack, which also includes Whodini's "Freaks Come Out At Night." And the music video not only includes footage from the film, it features the three stars - Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito - as backup singers to Billy Ocean in the performance footage.
• Billy Ocean was a pretty big star at the time thanks to his 1984 hit "Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run)," which climbed to #1 in America. He was born in Trinidad but based in London, where his family moved when he was 7. His birth name is Les Charles, and when he started his solo career in the early '70s after playing in some bands, he used that name professionally. He earned his first hit in 1976 with "Love Really Hurts Without You" after taking the name Billy Ocean. He had a few more UK hits over the next few years but didn't make any more headway in America until "Caribbean Queen." "Loverboy" and "Suddenly" followed, making him a star just a tier below the likes of Prince and Madonna. By the end of the '80s, he had two more #1 hits in America: "There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)" and "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car.
• Although they show up in the video singing backup, Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito didn't actually sing on this song - the backup singers were professionals. DeVito also mimes the saxophone in the video, which was really played by Jeff Smith. That same year, Paul Simon faked the saxophone in his video for "You Can Call Me Al," where Chevy Chase pretends to sing it.
• Billy Ocean wrote this song with Mutt Lange, Barry Eastmond and Wayne Brathwaite. Eastmond and Brathwaite were his producers and also his co-writers on "There'll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry)." Lange is one of the biggest hitmakers of this era, known mostly as producer thanks to his work on AC/DC's album Back In Black and Def Leppard's Pyromania. Lange came into Ocean's wake after "Caribbean Queen" - he co-wrote the follow-up single "Loverboy." Lange is also a co-writer on "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car."
  
  Surprisingly, "When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going" was the first UK #1 Lange worked on since "Rat Trap," which he produced for the Boomtown Rats in 1978.
• The origin of the saying that inspired this is not certain, but it has been attributed to Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of John F. Kennedy and one-time US Ambassador to Britain.
• The song first appeared on The Jewel Of The Nile soundtrack in 1985 and was released as a single that year. In 1986, it was included on Billy Ocean's album Love Zone.
• If Ocean had shaved one word from the title, this song may have hit the top spot in America. Ocean had three #1 hits in the US, and they all had eight word titles: "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."