Wow! The Billy Joel "Pressure" video was one of the defining classics of the brief and beloved Golden Age of MTV.1 I'm glad I got to introduce you to it. It's one of the rare music videos that always comes to mind when I hear the song; the surreal, fragmented images (and the allusions to 2001: A Space Odyssey) really convey the idea that Joel's protagonist is cracking under the pressure.2

In many ways, it's much more "dreamlike" to me than works which attempt to impose a more coherent narrative on the dream process.3

I think you're dead-on about Joel being at his best when he's saying something, and Queen, when they're saying nothing. Goodness knows that "Bohemian Rhapsody"4 is six minutes of -- well, Wikipedia describes it as a "stream-of-consciousness nightmare", and that's a fair cop, I think.

That may be one reason why I always think of "Under Pressure" as a Bowie song more than a Queen song, even though it originally appeared on a Queen album. Bowie is one of those musicians who always says something, even when he's pretending to say nothing. Another reason, of course, is that Bowie's vocals totally dominate the song; the subliminal allusions to his Christmas duet with Bing Crosby may contribute to the undercurrent of redemption in "Under Pressure".

Finally ... your Daffy/Bugs allusion has just tangled up in one of our earlier conversations this week, so now I'm seeing Bugs Bunny dressed as Captain America.


1 "Hey, remember when MTV actually showed music videos?" is a joke that dates to the late '80s. All my nostalgic whining about the elusive Good Radio Station is squared or cubed about MTV's Golden Age, from '82 to '85, though MTV's biggest attraction -- background noise that could punctuate social gatherings with sporadic bouts of wonderful visuals -- is something that could be replaced by, say, a video version of Pandora.
Of course, the other thing that ended the Golden Age of Music Video was that the best music video directors moved on to direct television and movie, to the lasting benefit of those visual media.

2 Or, possibly, deconstructing himself, which can be a useful coping mechanism. If a narrative can be assembled from that video, it's that Joel's protagonist is being forced/forcing himself to review his life and his internal symbolism: it's a visualization of the inner processes of therapy. that may be why it instantly came to mind after hearing the Queen/Bowie song on the radio2.1 last night.

2.1 And that could trigger a whole post on its own, as I get metaphysical about radio's role as a synchronistic pipeline to the Collective Unconscious. Yeah, after all these years, I'm still Jung at heart.

3 Okay, so that's not all that "coherent". I just like Tom Petty as the Mad Hatter.

4 "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the defining Rock anthem for me: when it plays on the radio, you have to pull over to the side of the road and put your hand over your heart, or, at the very least, sing along, and head bang Wayne-and-Garth style during the instrumentals.


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