Songfacts®:

• "Pressure" is a dark pulsating song exploring a mind trapped by the expectations of fans.
  
  I'm feeling the pressure
  I can't break out
  No one can hear me scream and shout
  Get out of my face, out of my mind
  
  "It's more like a straight Muse rock track," vocalist Matt Bellamy told Radio X. "It's like a different riff every 10 seconds, basically."
• The song's music video continues Muse's collaboration with director Lance Drake, who also filmed the band's visuals for "Dig Down," "Thought Contagion" and "Something Human."
  
  The clip centers on a high school prom that goes awry, re-creating the school dance scene in the 1985 movie classic Back To The Future, with Muse taking on the role of the band. American comic actor and former American football player Terry Crews introduces the group as Rocket Baby Dolls (aka Muse's original band name) and we see Bellamy playing the same red Gibson guitar Marty McFly rocked at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. The clip then turns into something more akin to another classic '80s movie, Gremlins.
• Matt Bellamy plays bass guitar in a Beatles tribute group named Dr. Pepper's Jaded Hearts Club Band, which also features Miles Kane of The Last Shadow Puppets. Muse drummer Dom Howard told the BBC he thinks the Muse's frontman's dalliance with the Fab Four fed through on this song.
  
  "Matt was studying a lot of Paul McCartney's basslines, and showing me," he explained. "[He] was like, 'Yeah, I mean, they're so intricate, and there's so much going on that you maybe don't initially notice.' So I think that song has got a bit of a Beatles, Paul McCartney-bass influence on it."
• Muse incorporated crowd noise into the song from the penalty shootout at the end of England's last 16 victory over Columbia during the 2018 World Cup. The idea behind it being that taking penalties in such an important game is a pressure situation.