Tougher Than the Rest

I rediscovered this song through an Angel Olsen cover. Angel Olsen has consistently been able to do no wrong, and as an accomplished songwriter, her decision to do a cover is both unexpected and an idiosyncratic choice. It makes perfect intuitive sense that she would make a quavering and ghostly work from one of Bruce Springsteen’s signature vulnerable-tough guy ballads. Springsteen’s sex appeal comes from the teasing implication that his veneer of machismo is thinner than his jeans, with only willpower and a belt buckle holding everything together. Nothing sexier than a manly dude who’s not afraid to be a sack of bruised emotions. Songs like this one, and many others, are begging to be stripped of their last vestiges of strutting masculinity and reimagined in the most barenaked way possible, preferably with a little bit of that sweet lesbian agenda to really get the tear ducts moistened. Either way, it’s an incredibly sexy song that completely belies its own message.