“Tough,” a collaboration between Lana Del Rey and Quavo, was released on July 3rd—Independence Day Eve, a choice certainly in line with the song’s all-American ethos. Del Rey and Quavo take a raw, smoky, biker-bar anthem and lay it over a clicking 808 beat, fusing country and trap—though, unfortunately, both genres lose a bit of their sparkle in the process.
Lana Del Rey has collaborated with rappers before, successfully in my opinion, and “Tough” is no exception; it’s got a strong hook, and the echoing weight on the bridge lends it an almost hymn-like quality. The lyrical wit flows in time with the song’s fast pace, and Del Rey’s voice is as deft as ever when she slides over the chorus, underlined deliciously by Quavo’s smoky rasp.
The song was described in a press release as “country-trap,” an “unlikely” fusion with which many publications and online commenters seem to be preoccupied. But really, though, we’ve been putting up with Post Malone since, what, 2018? Guitars and rap aren’t what I would call an unexpected combination in this day and age. While this song certainly does combine country and trap, both genres seem to have been heavily influenced by co-writer Jack Antonoff’s signature ambient echo-palace style–and I’m not sure the resulting vibe is quite right for a song about homegrown, dirt-road toughness.
Lana’s career has been characterized by slow, soft ballads, but many of her songs feature purposefully abrasive mannerisms that play to the darkness of her subject matter: her coy, girlish squeals in “Off To The Races,” for example, accompanied by flaming guitar licks on the excellent LA to the Moon recording; or, later, the audio crackle on the chorus of “Happiness Is A Butterfly,” as the weight of her emotion starts to tug on the recording equipment’s capabilities. There are a few interesting audio distortions on “Tough,” but the overall style hews too algorithm-friendly for its own message. The song is all about being, well, tough—scuffed boots, metal string, hard whiskey—but it goes down smoother than a glass of iced tea. It’s pleasant, it’s catchy, but is it Tough?
At the end of the day, the song feels just a bit too clean for the gritty message it’s trying to impart. The authenticity of Lana Del Rey’s broke-down Americana aesthetic is an ancient discussion that I have no particular interest in reviving, but when she sings about her “blue-collar, red-dirt attitude” over this glossy production, it’s hard not to notice the disconnect—hard not to think of the team of millionaires behind this country livin’ anthem. At the end of the day, “Tough” feels like a caricature; a Pinterest collage of gold-toothed, steel-toed ‘Murica, funneled through a soundboard just in time for the Fourth of July.
Leave a Reply