"Pressure" is a 1982 song by American musician Billy Joel from the album The Nylon Curtain, released as the album's first single and reached at number 20 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The synthesizer-driven rock song tells about the pressure of creating and the pressure of being a provider.
Themes and lyrics
In Night School, a show airing on MTV in 1982 that ran roughly a half-hour long, in which he answers questions posed by audience members, Billy Joel reveals that the pressure he was talking about in the song was something along the lines of writing pressure and pressure to provide.[2]
When I was starting out and trying to get things going, the pressure was if you don't get things going, they're going to throw you out of this apartment. There was that kind of pressure. "I'm hungry," my stomach was going, "pressure, food." I think that's pretty intense pressure. The pressure I was writing about in this song wasn't necessarily music business pressure, it was writing pressure. ... At the time, I was saying, "Well, I gotta write some more stuff for the album"; I was about halfway through, and I said, "Well, what am I gonna do? I don't have any ideas, it's gone, it's dead, I have nothing, nothing, nothing. There's nothing." And then the woman who is my secretary came into the house at that point and said, "Wow, you look like you're under a lot of pressure. I bet you that'd be a good idea for a song." And I went, "Thank you!"
The PBS children's TV series Sesame Street and New York PBS member stationWNET ("channel 13") are also mentioned in the first bridge, and the magazine Time is mentioned in the second.
Single and album edits
The single version removes the third verse (starting with "Don't ask for help, you're all alone") and the second bridge. This version of the song was included in the original 1985 release of Greatest Hits – Volume I & Volume II compilation album, but the full album version was restored for the remastered edition, as well as The Complete Hits Collection: 1973–1997. Radio stations vary in whether they play the shortened or the full version of the song. Playing the song on an episode of VH1 Storytellers in 1997, Joel (for humorous effect) modulated the opening piano motif to a major key, and commented that it sounded like a polka when played that way.[3]
Reception
Cash Box said that "the bass, drums and keyboards at times poke and pound like an annoying headache (appropriately, considering the theme) while sliding into briefly melodic calm at others."[4]Billboard said that it shows Joel "learned lessons from new music acts while keeping his melodic instincts intact" and specifically commented on the drumming and vocal performance.[5]
Music video
The music video of the song features the full version, instead of the shortened one. A common motif in the video is the use of water, whether splashed on Joel's shoes, rushing out from school desks, or flooding his apartment. The video was directed by Russell Mulcahy and made its premiere on MTV on September 9, 1982. Several scenes in the video make references to movies such as A Clockwork Orange, Poltergeist and, in the framing sequence, The Parallax View.[6]
^ abMolanphy, Chris (April 30, 2020). "Still Billy Joel to Me Edition". Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia (Podcast). Slate. Retrieved April 2, 2024.
