Billy Ocean Billy Ocean Billy Ocean (born Leslie Sebastian Charles; 21 January 1950) is a Trinidadian-English recording artist who had a string of R&B international pop hits in the 1970s and 1980s. He was the most popular British R&B singer-songwriter of the early to mid-1980s. After scoring his first four UK Top 20 successes, seven years passed before he accumulated a series of transatlantic successes, including three US number ones. His 1985 hit "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" reached number one in the UK and number two in the US. In 1985, Ocean won the Grammy Award for
Billy Ocean successes for Ocean, respectively. It also earned Ocean a second nomination for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance at the 1987 Grammy Awards. In February 1986, Ocean's video of "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" was banned by the BBC, owing to such non-union members as the American actors Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito, all three of whom were cast members of "Romancing the Stone" and "The Jewel of the Nile", miming to the backing vocals. At the 1987 Brit Awards, Ocean was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male. Ocean's next album, "Tear