David BOWIE & QUEEN - Under Pressure - Vocals track and Instrumental mix

[Vince Evert]

• A collaboration with David Bowie, this is credited to "Queen with David Bowie" because the B-side of the single is Queen's "Soul Brother." It was recorded at an impromptu session in Montreaux, Switzerland in the summer of 1981.
• According to Queen bass player John Deacon, Freddie Mercury did most of the songwriting on this, although everyone contributed. The lyrics deal with how pressure can destroy lives, but love can be the answer. The lyrics are characteristic of Mercury's songwriting.
  
  Deacon however did come up with the iconic two-note bass riff, although it came very close to vanishing: according to Roger Taylor in the Days of our Lives documentary, Deacon came up with the riff, then the band went for pizza before coming back to continue rehearsals. Upon returning, Deacon had completely forgotten his idea! Luckily, Taylor eventually remembered how the bassline went.
• Brian May recalled to Mojo magazine October 2008. "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."
  
  May adds to this feeling of the sessions being fairly strained in a further interview for the Days of our Lives documentary, where he notes that "suddenly you've got this other person inputting, inputting, inputting... he (David) had a vision in his head, and it's quite a difficult process and someone has to back off... and eventually I did back off, which is unusual for me."
• In the US, this was on Queen's Greatest Hits album and released as a single at the same time. It was not released on a UK album until six months later, when it was included on Hot Space.
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• This was only the second UK #1 hit for Queen. They hit #2 with "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," "We Are The Champions," "Somebody To Love," and "Killer Queen," but their only previous #1 in England was "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Under Pressure by Queen (featuring David Bowie) - Songfacts

Under Pressure by Queen (featuring David Bowie) song meaning, lyric interpretation, video and chart position

www.songfacts.com

 

[Vince Evert]

the official video (1982)

 

[Vince Evert]

There was a another collaboration , David and Anne Lennox where they performed the song on Freddie Mercury Memorial Concert in 1992.
Am adding the rehearsal and live videos to this thread. On the rehearsal George Michael looks on with great interest. Enjoy...

 

[tented]

the official video (1982)

I’ve always liked this video. I thought it was a bit surprising but smart not to have included any of their faces.

 

[Vince Evert]

thanks tented,

I've often wondered why neither Queen or Bowie appears on the official clip made in 1981. Have just found and read this on wikipedia

Music video​

The video for the song features neither Queen nor David Bowie due to touring commitments.[26] 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.[26][27] 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 many black and white kissing scenes).[27] Top of the Pops refused to show the video in its original form due to it containing footage of explosions in Northern Ireland, so an edited version was instead shown.[28][29] In 2003, Slant Magazine ranked "Under Pressure" number 27 among the 100 greatest music videos of all time.[30]

I’ve always liked this video. I thought it was a bit surprising but smart not to have included any of their faces.