“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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Sentimental messages land differently with different people in the same way that humor does. I can play a country classic tearjerker for my girlfriend and her eyes remain dry…and then she tears up over a Disney Christmas movie two hours later. Perhaps the messaging of this one would hit me harder if I was a father, but instead it merely induced a mild grin at its clever framing the first couple of times I heard it….and then scrambling to the mute button on my radio in annoyance every time thereafter.
It’s a blessing and a curse that Gary Allan got a hold of this one. His gruff demeanor makes him an ironic narrator for the song’s sentiment, but it also stilted some of his momentum as one of the edgier troubadours of the era. He had a number of songs that deserved to go to #1 but missed the mark, but when he finally caught on he was able to take this one to the top even though it didn’t represent his vibe nearly as well as a number of his forgotten numbers. I was happy to see he had found his audience but I wish it was with a song more to my liking.
Grade: C
Can you at least appreciate the subject matter and that Allan sang the song? I am not a dad either, but I can sympathize with the narrator. More than that, though, I can be thankful Allan made a song like this and not like something more Aldean-like.
Yeah I have a modest appreciation for the hook and the vocals. Not my cup of tea though.
Just like “Man to Man”, I think this is a good concept that subverts standard masculine stereotypes. Also just like “Man to Man”, I think he massively missed the mark.
Lyrics like “your first day of school, I cried like a fool” are just so maudlin in that 70s Red Sovine “Teddy Bear” vein to me. Being SCARED of her first steps? Following her bus to school on the first day? Are those even things parents DO? Maybe, but it just sounds so over-the-top to me. And “tough little boys…turn into big babies again” just seemed like it was trying way too hard to be the hook.
I always thought his “fake soft” vocal delivery and the string-laden production were just layering it on way too thick. The production and lyrics don’t fit Gary’s style at all, and he just ends up sounding like a slightly better version of Chuck Wicks on this one.
Which is a shame, because I do like the concept, but I just feel like it was incredibly mishandled. But tastes are subjective. You gave “The Baby” an F and I have no issues with that one, and I’m also okay with “Cleaning This Gun”.
ALSO just like “Man to Man”, I swear this song got literally zero recurrent play.
“Being SCARED of her first steps? Following her bus to school on the first day? Are those even things parents DO?”
God, yes. First steps are terrifying. Suddenly you can’t protect them anymore because they don’t stay where you leave them.
First bus ride is a huge leap of independence that is never undone, and yes, parents follow it to school.
I’ve been in education for over two decades, much of those years school based. The toughest dads are the ones who weep on the first day of PK or K, whenever their kid starts.
Fair enough. My knowledge of fatherhood is almost nonexistant, so as a non-parent this song just came off as hyperbolic to me.
I’m still not a fan, but I can respect this song a bit more with that context in mind.
Grade C+. It’s decent, average song and performance.
Gary Allan is one of my favorite artists and it will always be weird to me that this is a song that got to #1 when he had so many much better ones barely manage to crack the top 20.
In my area this was a Gary Allan recurrent. I really hated the song. Today not as much but being a huge Gary Allan fan this is in the top 3 worst Gary Allan singles. “The One” was worse due to production. But IDK I was always surprised that Gary choose to record this as it really didn’t fit his style. I’d give it a C-.
I remember my mom and I really hated “The One” when it came out, and it was actually WKJC’s most played song of that year. I haven’t heard it ONCE since.
Same with both “Man to Man” and this one. Both got zero recurrent play in my area, but I still hear “Nothing On but the Radio” and “Every Storm (Runs Out of Rain)” all the time.
I guess you have pretty strong opinions, both ways, on songs written by Harley Allen it seems
While I don’t consider this essential Gary Allan (it’s not quite his artistic persona I’d say), it’s a fine enough song with a relatable message to anyone who becomes a parent. That fiddle intro is particularly memorable, especially for the 2000s era of country music.
This is one of my favorite songs by Gary Allan. And yes, love is continuously worrisome for a vast multitude of reasons
Recording songs out of his perceived wheel-house helped him resist being typecast and becoming stuck promoting just one style. He handles this pretty sentiment and song with tenderness and grace. For me, this hit broadened his appeal and reach. If nothing else, it was unexpected. I wonder if his radio success might have been more sustained if he could have maintained his balance better with more sweet surprises like this.