Under Pressure - Queen (Freddy Mercury) live isolated vocals, only vocals♥️♥️ 1981, Canada

"Under Pressure" is a song by the British rock band Queen and singer David Bowie. Released as a single in October 1981, it was later included on Queen's tenth studio album Hot Space (1982). The song reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Queen's second number-one hit in their home country and Bowie's third; it also charted in the top 10 in more than 10 other countries.

The song has been described as a "monster rock track that stood out" on the Hot Space album. “Under Pressure" was listed at number 31 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the '80s, and voted the second-best collaboration of all time in a poll by Rolling Stone. In 2021, it was ranked number 429 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was played live at every Queen concert from 1981 until the end of the band's touring career in 1986. Live recordings appear on Queen live albums, including Queen Rock Montreal and Live at Wembley '86.
The song was included on some editions of Queen's first Greatest Hits compilations, such as the original 1981 Elektra release in North America. It appears on the band's compilation albums Greatest Hits II, Classic Queen, and Absolute Greatest, and on Bowie compilations such as Best of Bowie (2002), The Platinum Collection (2005), "The Best of David Bowie 1980/1987" (2007), Nothing Has Changed (2014), Legacy (2016), and Re:Call 3 (2017).
"Under Pressure" was sampled by American rapper Vanilla Ice for his 1990 single "Ice Ice Baby". Vanilla Ice initially did not credit Bowie or Queen, who sued and gained a songwriting credit on Ice's song. "Under Pressure" has been recorded by American rock bands My Chemical Romance and the Used, and singer Shawn Mendes, whose version featured singer Teddy Geiger. Xiu Xiu covered the song, with Swans frontman Michael Gira, for Xiu Xiu's 2008 album Women as Lovers.

"Under Pressure" was recorded at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, in September 1981. Queen, working on their 1982 album Hot Space, had been working on a song called "Feel Like", but were not satisfied with the result. Although it was said that the collaboration started from Queen running into David Bowie at Mountain while recording "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", the story told in interviews was that Bowie happened to be around in Montreux and lived nearby to the studio, so Queen invited Bowie down to the studio and it took off from there. The track was recorded during one marathon evening session at Mountain, with vocals and mixing completed at the Power Station in New York a couple of weeks later.
Bowie sang backing vocals for Queen's song "Cool Cat", but his vocals were removed from the final song because he was not satisfied with his performance. Afterwards, they worked together for a while and wrote "Under Pressure". 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), the song's primary musical songwriter was Freddie Mercury – though all contributed to the arrangement. As Brian May recalled to Mojo magazine in 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. It's a significant song because of David and its lyrical content." 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.
Also, some confusion has arisen 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 the bassline was already written before he became involved. Roger Taylor, in an interview for the BBC documentary Queen: The Days of Our Lives, stated that Deacon did indeed create the bassline, and that all through the sessions in the studio, he had been playing the riff over and over again. He also claims that when the band returned from dinner, Deacon misremembered the riff, but Taylor was still able to remember it. According to Brian May in a 2016 article for Mirror Online, 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 changed Deacon's memory of the riff to "Ding-Ding-Ding Diddle Ing-Ding".

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