“Cry Tough” by Poison

"Cry Tough" was Poison's first single ever, released in 1986 on Enigma through Capitol and lifted from their debut album Look What the Cat Dragged In, with the title track on the B-side. It's a glam-metal pep talk about believing in yourself until the dreams come true, hollered by Bret Michaels over C.C. DeVille's guitar, Bobby Dall's bass and Rikki Rockett's drums, and all four of them share the writing credit. Ric Browde produced, with engineer Jim Faraci as co-producer.

America shrugged, but it crept onto the UK Singles Chart at 97, and John Aizlewood gave it a warm review in Number One, reckoning Poison had put the groove in groovy and hoping to see them chartbound. The video later landed on the New York Times' list of 15 essential hair-metal videos.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.