Queen and David Bowie - Under Pressure

What this video is

Released 26 October 1981, 'Under Pressure' was a spontaneous one-night studio collaboration between Queen and David Bowie at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland — two of Britain's most iconic acts at their commercial peaks. The single reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Queen's second UK chart-topper and Bowie's third. The music video, conceived entirely without its performers, used the language…

Why it matters

A landmark in the British art-rock and new wave canon, the video is among the earliest mainstream examples of a music promo functioning as pure found-footage essay film. By entirely eschewing artist performance, it anticipated the conceptual video movement of mid-1980s MTV. Its deployment of…

The director

David Victor Mark Mallet (born 17 December 1945, West Horsley, Surrey, England) is a British director of music videos, concert films, and television. He co-founded the production company MGMM with Scott Millaney, Brian Grant, and Russell Mulcahy in the late…