In 1981 Queen, was working on their album Hot Space, as the group were fleshing out a song called "Feel Like". At the same studio, was David Bowie who was recording "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", who ran into the band and eventually sang backing vocals for the song "Cool Cat", but then removed them from the final song because he didn't like his performance, so the two sides ended up writing lyrics for Feel Like, which became "Under Pressure".
"It was hard, because you had four very precocious boys and David, who was precocious enough for all of us. David took over the song lyrically. Looking back, it's a great song, but it should have been mixed differently. Freddie and David had a fierce battle over that. It's a significant song because of David and its lyrical content." said Brian May.
The iconic bassline that's identified with the song has often been credited to David Bowie himself, but Roger Taylor has said that bassist John Deacon came up with the bassline and then forgot it when the group went out to dinner, so Taylor reminded him how it went before recording it. Brian May, however clarified that it was Bowie, who remembered it and changed the riff,
"Deacy began playing, 6 notes the same, then one note a fourth down". After the dinner break, Bowie changed Deacon's memory of the riff to "Ding-Ding-Ding Diddle Ing-Ding".
"Under Pressure" became Queen's second number-one hit in the UK and Bowie's third, and was sampled by Vanilla Ice for the massive hit single "Ice Ice Baby", which resulted in a lawsuit that eventually began to change sampling laws in music.