Under Pressure: Jedward Consider Re-Recording ‘Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)’ And Appeal To Vanilla Ice To Join Them Ahead Of New Single ‘Taste The Heat’

by Lisa Hafey | Posted on

If you’ve missed the recent drama over Jedward’s debut single, ‘Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)’, then we’ll quickly bring you up to speed. Last Friday Jedward were made aware that the track had been removed from Spotify and all other streaming media, and not only that, the music video, along with its more than 6 million views, had also disappeared. The single, which had been their only release under the Sony label back in 2010, just happened to vanish at the same time as Simon Cowell stepped down from Syco Music. Coincidence? Well Jedward certainly don’t think so, and they tweeted the following:

Now, it might not be such a big deal, except that it was removed without them being informed in the first place (rude, and very unprofessional!) and not only that, but the single had been re-issued as part of their debut album, ‘Planet Jedward’, also released in 2010, but under the Universal label. ‘Planet Jedward’ isn’t available to stream on Spotify in the UK, and hasn’t been for a while now (that’s a whole other story), but it is available in Ireland, and now when anyone goes to stream the album, they find that ‘Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)’ is blanked out and skipped over. Not cool.

The single charted at number 1 in their native Ireland, and in the UK it was a mere 24 sales shy of knocking Owl City’s ‘Fireflies’ off the top spot. So when Jedward say it’s their legacy, they’re not wrong. Despite being released 10 years ago, it’s still one of their best known songs, with only their 2011 Eurovision hit, ‘Lipstick’ challenging it for the title.

So move forward to last night. In an interview with Howell Davies for The Sun newspaper, John and Edward said they would be interested in re-releasing the single, to mark its 10th year, and wanted Vanilla Ice to reprise his part in the song. It’s certainly not an unprecedented idea, lots of artists re-record their biggest hits, and recently Taylor Swift has stated she’s going to do it, following the sale by her former record label of the masters of her first six albums to her arch-nemesis, Scooter Braun.

How would John and Edward be able to re-record the single though, considering it’s largely based on a track written and performed by Queen and David Bowie? Well this is where Vanilla Ice comes in.

In an interview in 2017 with The Dan Patrick Show, Ice (real name Rob Van Winkle) revealed that when Queen and Bowie sued him in 1990 for sampling the song without permission, he bought the rights to it.

He explained that he “went to Brian May and bought the song”, because owning the publishing rights worked out to be cheaper than fighting both of them in court. It still meant that they got songwriting credits on the track, but for Jedward, it means that, should Rob be up for it, it won’t be a problem to do the song again.

Meanwhile, the video for Jedward’s single, ‘Taste The Heat’, is doing the numbers, and has so far racked up more than 130,000 views on YouTube, since it was dropped on Friday. The twins have announced that the track itself will be released on digital streaming media, via Universal Music Singapore, on 27 July. It’s the third track from their 2019 album, ‘Voice Of A Rebel’, following on from ‘Soul Crushing’, and ‘Bodies In Action’, which were released as grat tracks with pre-orders of the album.

What do you think? Should Jedward and Vanilla Ice re-release ‘Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby)’ and give it a whole new lease on life, or should they let the past be? What do you think about Sony taking down the song without permission? Have you heard of this happening to other artists? Let us know in the comments.

‘Taste The Heat’ is out now on JedwardVEVO through Universal. You can download the video on Apple Music.

Stream and download ‘Voice Of A Rebel’ here, and buy the CD from Jedward’s official website.

Jedward can be found online on their official website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.

Read all our other Jedward articles here. Watch the video for ‘Taste The Heat’:

Jedward - Taste The Heat

About the author

Lisa has been writing for over 20 years, starting as the entertainment editor on her university newspaper. Since then she's written for Popwrapped, Maximum Pop, Celebmix, and ListenOnRepeat.

Lisa loves all good music, with particular fondness for Jedward and David Bowie. She's interviewed Edward Grimes (Jedward), Kevin Godley, Trevor Horn, Paul Young, Peter Cox (Go West), Brendan B Brown (Wheatus), Bruce Foxton (The Jam), among many many more. Lisa is also available for freelance writing - please email lisa@essentiallypop.com

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