Tougher Than the Rest

Nation of Language release a striking new cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love album track “Tougher Than the Rest.” The song is available on a limited-edition 7″ single (of 1000 copies). Nation of Language’s Ian Richard Devaney offers this on the track: “Like any good New Jersey resident I grew up listening to Springsteen, but this song somehow slipped by me during that formative era. I was really only exposed to it within the last few years, and it’s followed me around since then. I can remember finishing a particularly emotional show somewhere deep in last year’s tour, and our sound engineer Skinny started playing it as our exit music. It caught me so hard that I stayed there, just offstage, and listened to the rest of the song blasting, mixed with the sounds of all of the people milling about the venue. When we ultimately endeavored that we might try doing our own version of the song we luckily had a Yamaha CS-80 at our disposal, the same synth model which featured pretty heavily across the Tunnel of Love sessions back in ’87. Knowing we were working with some of the same textures as the original made it a little less daunting to cover Bruce.”