Here we are. At the end of this record at last.
I’ve never felt like Under Pressure belonged on this album. It was a single that was released a year before the album’s release. It was featured on their “Greatest Hits” record, before Hot Space was released. It feels like an afterthought.
Or worse.
It feels like filler.
Feels like…..hmmm….
Okay. “Under Pressure”‘s roots can be found in an unfinished Queen track called “Feels Like” that was written by Roger. Which can be found here: http://youtu.be/ttfslaPrlDI and when you hear that version, with it’s arpeggiatting guitar that calls to memory “Tenement Funster” & “Rock It (Prime Jive)”, it’s no surprise that Roger started it.
What is surprising is that Roger created the basis for one of Queen’s biggest hits. The flipside to that is that he didn’t finish it and had he, it wouldn’t have been the biggest single.
But, given that it was written before the album that might explain why Roger’s awful “Calling All Girls” was a single from the record……
You know this track. The unforgettable bass-riff. (Over the years 1980-1982, Queen found itself becoming a bass-riff driven semi-dance band) Freddie’s falsetto (which has really never sounded better). Roger’s giant drums. The huge, elegiac, desperate, bridge. Bowie’s lyrics. Bowie’s voice in counterpoint to Freddie’s.
The fingersnaps.
It’s become one of the indelible songs of the 80s. But does it deserve to be? Does it define the decade? Yes and no. What it defines, for me, is the same thing that Raging Bull defined when it was named “best film of the 80s” despite being released in the first year of the decade, and not really….but that’s another story…
What it really points to is the end of the ideas of the 70s. It’s grandiose, but it’s also tired in its grandiosity. It’s epic. But not in a great way. It’s verrrrrry socially conscious, which is what so much of the the past 15 years before this record was about.
“Under Pressure” is one of the great tracks of the decade. And it deserves to be on Queen Greatest Hits volume 1-50.
But, here, it’s just filler that you already bought and didn’t need again.
Grade: A-
