[Intro: Freddie Mercury]
Mmm num ba de
Dum bum ba be
Doo buh dum ba beh beh
[Verse 1: David Bowie & Freddie Mercury]
Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you, no man ask for
Under pressure that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets
[Bridge: Freddie Mercury]
Um ba ba be
Um ba ba be
De day da
Ee day da – that’s okay
[Chorus: David Bowie & Freddie Mercury]
It’s the terror of knowing what the world is about
Watching some good friends screaming
‘Let me out’
Pray tomorrow gets me higher
Pressure on people, people on streets
[Verse 2: David Bowie & Freddie Mercury]
Day day de mm hm
Da da da ba ba
Okay
Chipping around, kick my brains around the floor
These are the days it never rains but it pours
Ee do ba be
Ee da ba ba ba
Um bo bo
Be lap
People on streets
Ee da de da de
People on streets
Ee da de da de da de da
[Chorus: David Bowie & Freddie Mercury]
It’s the terror of knowing what the world is about
Watching some good friends screaming
‘Let me out’
Pray tomorrow gets me higher, high
Pressure on people, people on streets
[Bridge: David Bowie & Freddie Mercury]
Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence but it don’t work
Keep coming up with love but it’s so slashed and torn
Why – why – why?
Love, love, love, love, love
Insanity laughs under pressure we’re breaking
[Verse 3: Freddie Mercury]
Can’t we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can’t we give love that one more chance?
Why can’t we give love, give love, give love, give love
Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?
[Outro: David Bowie]
Because love’s such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the (people on streets) edge of the night
And love (people on streets) dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
“Under Pressure” is a 1981 song by the British rock band Queen. The song was written and recorded in collaboration with the singer David Bowie. It was included on Queen’s 1982 album Hot Space. The song reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the band’s second number-one hit in their home country (after 1975’s “Bohemian Rhapsody“, which topped the chart for nine weeks). The song only peaked at No. 29 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and would re-chart for one week at No. 45 in the US following Bowie’s death in January 2016. It was also number 31 on VH1‘s 100 Greatest Songs of the ’80s.[1]It has been voted the 2nd best collaboration of all time in a poll by the Rolling Stone magazine.[2]It has since sold over 3.4 million copies worldwide.[3]
Queen had been working on a song called “Feel Like”, but was not satisfied with the result.[11][12]David Bowie had originally come to Mountain Studios to sing back up vocals on another Queen song, “Cool Cat”, but his vocals were removed from the final song because he was not satisfied with his performance. Once he got there, they worked together for a while and wrote the song.[13] The final version, which became “Under Pressure”, evolved from a jam session that Bowie had with the band at Queen’s studio in Montreux, Switzerland. It was credited as being co-written by the five musicians. The scat singing that dominates much of the song is evidence of the jam-beginnings as improvisation. However, according to Queen bassist John Deacon (as quoted in a French magazine in 1984)[14], the song’s primary musical songwriter was Freddie Mercury – though all contributed to the arrangement. Brian May recalled to Mojo magazine, in October 2008, that, “It was hard, because you had four very precocious boys and David, who was precocious enough for all of us. David took over the song lyrically. Looking back, it’s a great song but it should have been mixed differently. Freddie and David had a fierce battle over that. It’s a significant song because of David and its lyrical content.”[15] The earlier, embryonic version of the song without Bowie, “Feel Like”, is widely available in bootleg form, and was written by Queen drummer Roger Taylor.
There has also been some confusion about who had created the song’s bassline. John Deacon said (in Japanese magazine Music life in 1982) that David Bowie created it. In more recent interviews, Brian May and Roger Taylor credited the bass riff to Deacon. Bowie, on his website, said that the bassline was already written before he became involved.[16] Roger Taylor, in an interview for the BBC documentary Queen: the Days of Our Lives, stated that Deacon did indeed create the bassline, stating that all through the sessions in the studio he had been playing the riff over and over. He also claims that when the band returned from dinner, Deacon, amusingly, forgot the riff, but fortunately Taylor was still able to remember it.[17] Brian May clarified matters in a 2016 Mirror Online article, writing that it was actually Bowie, not Taylor, who had inadvertently changed the riff. The riff began as “Deacy began playing, 6 notes the same, then one note a fourth down”. After the dinner break, Bowie corrected (actually changed) Deacon’s memory of the riff to “Ding-Ding-Ding Diddle Ing-Ding”.[18]
Music video
The video for the song features neither Queen nor David Bowie due to touring commitments.[19] Taking the theme of pressure, director David Mallet edited together stock footage of traffic jams, commuter trains packed with passengers, explosions, riots, cars being crushed and various pieces of footage from silent films of the 1920s, most notably Sergei Eisenstein‘s influential Soviet film Battleship Potemkin, the silent Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring John Barrymore, and F.W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu, a masterpiece of the German Expressionist movement.[19][20] The video explores the pressure-cooker mentality of a culture willing to wage war against political machines, and at the same time love and have fun (there is also footage of crowds enjoying concerts, and lots of black and white kissing scenes).[20]Top of the Pops refused to show the video due to it containing footage of explosions in Northern Ireland, so a choreographed performance was instead shown.[21][22] In 2003, Slant Magazine ranked Under Pressure number 27 among the 100 greatest music videos of all time.[23]
Track listing
7″: EMI / EMI 5250 (UK)
Side one
“Under Pressure” (Mercury, May, Taylor, Deacon, Bowie) – 4:08
Side two
“Soul Brother” (Mercury) – 3:38
7″: Elektra / E-47235 (US)
Side one
“Under Pressure” (Mercury, May, Taylor, Deacon, Bowie) – 4:08
The September 2005 edition of online music magazine Stylus singled out the bassline as the best in popular music history.[24] In November 2004, Stylus music critic Anthony Miccio commented that “Under Pressure” “is the best song of all time” and described it as Queen’s “opus“.[25] In 2012, Slant Magazine listed “Under Pressure” as the 21st best single of the 1980s.[26]
Live performances
Although very much a joint project, only Queen incorporated the song into their live shows at the time. Bowie chose not to perform the song before an audience until the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, when he and Annie Lennox sang it as a duet (backed by the surviving Queen members).[27] However, after Mercury’s death and the Outside tour in 1995, Bowie performed the song at virtually every one of his live shows, with bassist Gail Ann Dorsey taking Mercury’s vocal part. The song also appeared in set lists from A Reality Tour mounted by Bowie in 2004, when he frequently would dedicate it to Freddie Mercury. Queen + Paul Rodgers have recently performed the song; and in summer of 2012, Queen + Adam Lambert toured, including a performance of the song by Lambert and Roger Taylor in each show.[28] While David Bowie was never present for a live performance of the song with Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor instead filled for backing vocals usually in unison with Mercury, as Mercury took over all of Bowie’s parts.
Live recordings
Queen first recorded a live version of the song at The Montreal Forum in Canada on 24 November 1981. This was included in the concert films We Will Rock You and Queen Rock Montreal.[29] Incidentally it is one of the few times in concert where Mercury used falsetto in the song on the line “these are the days it never rains but it pours”.
A second live version of the song was recorded at Milton Keynes, England, in 1982. This was released in 2004 on the live album/DVD Queen on Fire – Live at the Bowl. Prior to the concert, rumours circulated that Bowie would appear with Queen to sing his parts onstage, but it is probable that he did not even attend the concert.
In September 1982 the band performed the song during an appearance on the eighth-season premiere of Saturday Night Live, which turned out to be Freddie Mercury’s final live performance with Queen in the United States.
Later, Queen recorded a third live version of the song at Wembley Stadium, London, in 1986. This was released on the live album/DVD Live at Wembley Stadium. Another rendition from this same tour (from Queen’s concert in Budapest) appeared in edited form on the album Live Magic in 1986. A recording taken from Queen’s last gig in Knebworth Park in 1986, appears, albeit in remixed form, as a B-side from second CD single of “Rah Mix” version of this song, released in 1999. (See below)
During the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992, the surviving members of Queen along with Bowie and Annie Lennox (filling in for Mercury) performed the song.[27] The concert was later released on DVD in 2002 for the 10th anniversary.[27]
A version recorded by David Bowie’s live band in 1995 was released on the bonus disc included with some versions of Outside – Version 2. This live version was also released on the single “Hallo Spaceboy” in 1996.
A remixed version (called the “Rah Mix”) was issued in December 1999 to promote Queen’s Greatest Hits III compilation, reaching No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart. The video for the Rah Mix was directed by DoRo and features footage of Freddie Mercury from the Wembley concert on 12 July 1986 and David Bowie at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert also at Wembley on 20 April 1992 spliced together using digital technology (and with Annie Lennox carefully edited out) and features on the Greatest Flix III compilation, the Rah Mix CD single (as an Enhanced CD video) and the 2011 iTunes LP edition of Hot Space.
Track listing
Two CD singles (one multimedia enhanced) released 6 December 1999 and 7″ picture disc released 13 December 1999. As “Bohemian Rhapsody” wins The Song of The Millennium award, this released as B-side under the title “The Song of The Millenium – Bohemian Rhapsody”.[31]
It was initially released in US on the Elektra Records US and Canadian versions of Queen’s Greatest Hits as a new track.
It was released in UK on Queen’s (1991) Greatest Hits II (which would later be included in The Platinum Collection (2000, 2002 and 2011) removing the second time David Bowie sings, “This is our last dance.”
Hollywood Records remixed the song for their 1992 release, Classic Queen. This version features improved sound quality, but removes Mercury’s interjection “that’s okay!” at about 0:53.
It was featured nearly in its entirety in the 2010 film It’s Kind of a Funny Story, initially as a ‘cover’ by the patients in a music therapy class at a New York City psychiatric ward, which the film transformed into the authentic song ‘performed’ by the patients, dressed in glam, in a near music-video style imaginary sequence (with David Bowie and Queen’s original vocals and instrumentation).
Other remixes
Mr. Mixx Remix. Mr. Mixx of 2 Live Crew produced a hip-hop remix intended for inclusion as the fourth track on the cancelled 1992 Hollywood Records compilation BASIC Queen Bootlegs.
Lazy Kiss Edit. Released in October 2013 by Brazilian Electro-House duo, Lazy Kiss. This edit/mashup gained exposure through blog filter site, Hype Machine and the Italian music blog, Frequenze Indipendenti.[34]
Mouth Pressure. Released in January 2017 as a part of the Neil Cicierega album Mouth Moods, “Mouth Pressure” pairs the instrumentals from “Under Pressure” with the vocals from Smash Mouth‘s “All Star“.[35][36]
Controversy arose when Vanilla Ice sampled the bassline for his 1990 single “Ice Ice Baby“. Initially he denied the accusation and then said he had modified it[70] but did not originally pay songwriting credit or royalties to Queen and Bowie.[71][72] A lawsuit resulted in Bowie and all members of Queen receiving songwriting credit for the sample. Vanilla Ice later claimed that he purchased the publishing rights to “Under Pressure”.[73][74] Vanilla Ice said buying the song made more financial sense than paying out royalties.[73]
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