Pressure (Billy Joel song)

"Pressure" is a synthesizer-driven song from 1982 by Billy Joel about the pressure of creating and the pressure of being a provider. The song was a single from the album The Nylon Curtain.

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.^[1]

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 affiliate WNET ("channel 13") are also mentioned in the first bridge.

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 release of the Greatest Hits I & II compilation album, but the full album version was restored for the remastered edition, as well as the Complete Hits Collection in 1997. Radio stations vary in whether they play the shortened or the full version of the song. The song is written in a minor key. In playing the song on a TV special, Joel played the song in a major key, and commented that it sounds like a polka when played that way.

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 and Poltergeist. During a game show parody two-thirds of the way through the video, a bio for Joel briefly flashes on the screen. It reads: "William Joel, Age: 29, Occupation: Computer Software, Intersts [sic]: fast bikes, cooking, water sports, satellite."

Chart positions

Chart (1982)	Peak position
Australia (Kent Music Report)^[2]	16
Canadian Singles Chart^[3]	9
French Singles Chart^[4]	72
Japan Oricon Singles Chart	78
New Zealand Singles Chart	24
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	20
U.S. Billboard Top Rock Tracks	8
Zimbabwe Singles Chart^[5]	19

References

↑ "MTV Night School (1982) | Billy Joel - YouTube". www.youtube.com.
↑ Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrated ed.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. p. 156. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.
↑ "Item Display - RPM - Library and Archives Canada". Collectionscanada.gc.ca. Retrieved 2013-09-02.
↑ InfoDisc, Daniel Lesueur, Dominic Durand, Lesueur. "InfoDisc".
↑
- Zimbabwe. Kimberley, C. Zimbabwe: singles chart book. Harare: C. Kimberley, 2000

External links

Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics

Billy Joel

Studio albums	Cold Spring Harbor Piano Man Streetlife Serenade Turnstiles The Stranger 52nd Street Glass Houses The Nylon Curtain An Innocent Man The Bridge Storm Front River of Dreams Fantasies & Delusions

Live albums	Songs in the Attic KOHЦEPT 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert 12 Gardens Live Live at Shea Stadium: The Concert

Compilations	Greatest Hits, Vol. 1–3 Souvenir: The Ultimate Collection The Ultimate Collection The Essential Billy Joel Piano Man: The Very Best of Billy Joel My Lives The Hits

Singles	"She's Got a Way" "Piano Man" "You're My Home" "Worse Comes to Worst" "Travelin' Prayer" "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" "The Entertainer" "Just the Way You Are" "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" "Only the Good Die Young" "She's Always a Woman" "Vienna" "The Stranger" "My Life" "Big Shot" "Honesty" "Until the Night" "All for Leyna" "You May Be Right" "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" "Don't Ask Me Why" "Sometimes a Fantasy" "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" (Live) "She's Got a Way" (Live) "Pressure" "Allentown" "Goodnight Saigon" "Tell Her About It" "Uptown Girl" "An Innocent Man" "The Longest Time" "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" "This Night" "Keeping the Faith" "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" "The Night Is Still Young" "Modern Woman" "A Matter of Trust" "This Is the Time" "Baby Grand" "Back in the U.S.S.R." (Live) "We Didn't Start the Fire" "Leningrad" "I Go to Extremes" "The Downeaster 'Alexa'" "That's Not Her Style" "And So It Goes" "Shameless" "All Shook Up" "The River of Dreams" "All About Soul" "No Man's Land" "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)" "To Make You Feel My Love" "Hey Girl" "All My Life" "Christmas in Fallujah"

Other songs	"Everybody Loves You Now" "Captain Jack" "Los Angelenos" "Root Beer Rag" "New York State of Mind" "Prelude/Angry Young Man" "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)" "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" "Zanzibar" "Laura" "Scandinavian Skies" "Big Man on Mulberry Street"

Tours	An Innocent Man Tour Face to Face 1994 Face to Face 1995 Face to Face 1998 Face to Face 2001 Face to Face 2003 Face to Face 2009 Face to Face 2010 Billy Joel in Concert

Film	The Last Play at Shea

See also	Discography Movin' Out Billy Joel Band The Hassles Attila Alexa Ray Joel Christie Brinkley Katie Lee "Movin' Out" (Glee episode) Oliver and Company

Book Category

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/30/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.