It has also been shorthand for a big-thought Democratic Party strategy of carrying the West that the Salazar brothers, John and Ken, helped invent and articulate as shoulder-to-shoulder voices of deep-country Colorado, where they grew up and where John still runs the family potato farm.
With Billy May on Come Fly With Me, Come Dance With Me and Come Swing With Me, Sinatra clung on to his big band roots: in these brash, brassy arrangements (although Fly has some ballads, including a gorgeous Autumn in New York) the high-stepping tempos are shouldered by a voice still in complete control.
"Let me be brutally frank," the dean said in his square-shouldered voice.
"You going to be playing with a chip on your shoulder?" one voice said.
Besides, McCone seemed to be constantly looking over my shoulder, her voice intruding on those of the new characters.
She shrugged her shoulders, her voice trailing away, the ensuing pause indicating that the Upper West Side wasn't really their kind of place.
Towards the end of the work, as the music falls away and she and Kelly act out a scene from James Joyce's The Dead, the story of a woman remembering the boy she loved and lost when they were just teenagers, O'Sullivan acts through gripped fingers and tense shoulders, her voice searching and unsteady.
When I first did a full-length poetry reading, three years later, my arms plunged stiff from my shoulders, my voice was changeless in pitch and volume, my face rigid, expressionless, pale as if I were a collaborator facing a firing squad.
But until I saw him speak live, I didn't quite understand his mass appeal how a senior citizen with slouched shoulders, whose voice sounds like the adults I grew up with, could win over so many Americans.
In 1993, when the world swimming championships were staged in Rome, there was resentment and suspicion on the pool deck as the Chinese women dominated the meet with a team featuring multiple medalists with massive shoulders, deep voices and heavy acne.
Before you give them the cold shoulder, try voicing your concerns or telling them you need to "take a break".
