“Tough Little Boys”
Gary Allan
Written by Harley Allan and Don Sampson
Radio & Records
#1 (2 weeks)
October 17 – October 24, 2003
Billboard
#1 (2 weeks)
October 25 – November 1, 2003
Maybe we should’ve seen the bro country movement coming.
Back in the day, this exquisite ballad was lumped together with genuinely corny fluff like “Mr. Mom,” the latest evidence of the genre’s emasculation of its leading men.
What hogwash that is in retrospect, now that we’ve had regressive nonsense like “Cleaning My Gun” and “Let Your Boys Be Country” in heavy rotation as the modern day dad takes on country radio.
Allan strikes the perfect balance of toughness and vulnerability here, capturing the paradox of parenthood: your reservoirs of strength you can tap into to protect your children never runs dry, but they can’t directly draw from it. The less helpless and more independent they become, the harder it is to shield them from harm. As I used to joke back in my Catholic school days, God gives you the gift of parenthood, but it comes with that pesky clause of free will.
Anyway, the vignette at the end of this father needing to sit alone for a while after his daughter gets married is everything. The entire song is about the stress of being responsible for this little human being as they grow, yet he’s already preemptively grieving when that stress comes to an end.
As the Country Universe kid says, “Love is worry.”
“Tough Little Boys” gets an A.
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