“Pressure” by Billy Joel

Billy Joel picked "Pressure" as the first single from The Nylon Curtain in 1982, and it's a jittery, synthesizer-driven rocker that ticks and jolts like a nervous system on overload. Joel plays piano, synthesizer and even melodica, Liberty DeVitto hammers the drums and Doug Stegmeyer's bass keeps the tension taut, with Phil Ramone producing.

The pressure in question, Joel explained on MTV's Night School that year, wasn't the music business breathing down his neck but the plain grind of having to write: he was halfway through the album and needed more songs. There's an older kind in there too, the pressure of being the one who has to provide, which he'd known since the lean days when making rent was the worry. It made 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.