The greatest rip-off in music history
- aimeeelkington153
- Dec 19, 2025
- 6 min read
One single note was at the centre of possibly the greatest song writing rip-off of all time.
When Vanilla Ice dropped Ice Ice Baby in 1990, it quickly became his biggest hit. It stormed to the top of the US billboards, and was just everywhere. MTV, Radio, everywhere. But the global attention quickly meant that certain people noticed something a little too familiar.
Yep, it sounds exactly like Under Pressure, obviously by Queen ft Bowie. And it was released in 1981. So did Vanilla Ice plagiarize it? Depends who you ask, and when.
Let’s go back to the beginning. Queen had tucked themselves away in Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, writing and recording material for their 1982 album Hot Space.
Fun fact, Brian May and Roger Taylor liked that studio so much they later ended up buying it for their own private use.
Anyway, a mate of Freddy’s had a house nearby and happened to be in town. A guy who called himself David Bowie.
Producer Dave Richards decided to give him a call... And set history in motion. Richards told Business Insider:
"They were recording there and David knew that I was in town, and phoned me up and asked me if I'd come down, if I'd like to go down and see what was happening. So I went down and these things happen, you know, suddenly you're writing something together and it was totally spontaneous, it certainly wasn't planned. It was peculiar!"
Roger Taylor shed some extra light on the story, telling Business Insider:
"Well, I think the process was we were all drunk, and in the studio, and we were just for fun playing all sorts of old songs. I remember a couple of old Cream songs, and whatever came into our heads and I think David said, 'Look, hang on a minute, why don't we write one of our own?"
And the bassline that caused so much controversy… was initially forgotten. The story goes that John Deacon came up with it and was playing it on repeat all day. They all went out for dinner and some drinks and afterwards, Deacon had FORGOTTEN the bassline…
Luckily, Brian May’s astronomical brain managed to remember it, and they started jamming.
May brought in a big chordy riff, which he liked because it sounded like The Who - he loved The Who. However, Bowie had different ideas and changed things up, which irritated him.
May later said he felt like there were too many cooks in the kitchen. I suppose that’s what happens when you’ve got guys like himself, Freddy Mercury and David Bowie in the same room.
Either way, they came up with the song in one big drunken jam session. What a different time it was.
There’s a famous story that every vocal on the track was deliberately recorded separately, with none of them hearing the other. They wanted to see what happened this way, and it’s a famous fun fact that it all just magically worked together.
Except.. Bowie cheated. Sound engineer Reinhold Mack revealed that Bowie snuck into the control room during Freddy’s recording session to listen, and secretly recorded his own in the morning.
Anything for the art right?
Anyway, we all know the rest. The song is one of the most iconic rock duets ever.
And it’s all about that intro bassline. It’s literally two notes on a loop, until you get to the verses. So simple you could hear it once and hum it back.
Vanilla Ice heard it and thought hmmm… I could use that.
So he did.
As i said, it was soon all over the radio, and, according to a blog post by Freddie Mercury’s former assistant, Phoebe Freestone, it soon caught the ear of Freddy himself. She told freddiemercury.com:
"He carried on eating his breakfast and suddenly stopped, frowning. I thought there was a problem with his food but he said ‘no.' He started listening intently and couldn’t believe his ears. He was smiling when he said that he couldn’t believe what he was hearing ... a blatant ripoff."
What’s funny is that it wasn’t even really the band that went after him.
Brian May told Ultimate Guitar:
“We didn't go to war for it, but the publishers did"
But did he really steal it? Well… short answer yes. But there’s some fine print, and as usual in the world of celebrities, if you’ve got the cash, it’s not a crime.
Apparently.
As you saw at the start, Vanilla Ice amazingly tried to deny copying it exactly, clinging to a tiny difference in the rhythm.
And technically, he’s telling the truth. There is one more beat in his version than in Queens. But it’s not even another note - still that same old D note. They just added one in where Queen let the percussion do the work.
I mean I'm sorry, but side to side you can literally hear the same symbol crash at the beginning, and the finger snaps and claps are the same. The tempo, everything, it’s the same.
The stick in the mud is whether this counts as plagiarism, or taking inspiration. And Vanilla used a key word at the start of that video: Sampling.
Sampling has been used for decades, especially in hip hop. And there’s nothing wrong with that per se. It’s commonly and often brilliantly done in a lot of different genres throughout music.
Now in that video, he says they sampled it, and then that his version is different - that famous extra ‘ding’. You can see even he struggles to keep a straight face.
In a later interview, likely after the lawyers came after him, he backtracked and readily admitted that yes, he did use Under Pressure. But he made the argument that every rap artist samples music.
And that the money people only cared because the song went multiplatinum. And in fairness… He does make a reasonable argument.
I guess if we’re talking strictly business, you can see what he means.
I’m reminded by the whole Richard Ashcroft and Rolling Stones Bittersweet Symphony argument - but I won’t get into that now.
The key here is how they went about it. The Oxford Dictionary defines plagiarism as:
“Presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement.”
And that's the key. Adding an extra note might mean Mr Ice didn’t copy their work, if only by the strictest definition. But if you didn’t obtain permission, or give proper credit:
That’s plagiarism.
Mr Ice didn’t gain permission, or give credit until after the lawyers came after him. And while he might have a point that they probably wouldn’t have bothered if he hadn’t sold so many copies, the facts are the facts.
In the end, Queen and Bowie’s legal teams came knocking, and they settled the matter in private rather than go through a long and expensive court process. And he paid dearly, as May explained to Ultimate Guitar:
"So, they came to a settlement, which was that he pays us most of the money he's ever generated with that song. We're alright with that [laughs]; we became a part of the writing team, if you like."
This whole thing produced so much media coverage that it fundamentally changed how we look at sampling.
In fact, Vanilla Ice claimed he later spent $4m and bought the rights to Under Pressure outright because it was cheaper than paying royalties.
A spokesperson for Queen said that this was completely untrue though.
In any case, I guess what it comes down to is acknowledging your influences properly. I mean, it’s fine to be inspired by other people - that’s half the magic of music right? Every great band or musician started because they heard something that moved them, made by somebody else.
And it’s even fine to sample or make a riff on something - as long as you don’t rip it off and call it your own without giving credit where it’s due.
Vanilla Ice has made the fair point that Ice Ice Baby is still his song - he wrote it, produced. And he’s right - but if you’re going to borrow someone's art, you’ve got to give them credit.
In the end, Brian May takes a very diplomatic approach to the whole thing:
"That's an interesting example though, isn't it? I mean, he made something new and interesting, and people liked it. So, I guess it's about acknowledging your influences, that's the decent thing to do. Ice Ice Baby, it still makes me smile.”
For the record… I would have loved to have seen Queen and Bowie do a cover of Ice Ice Baby. Just for the laughs.
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