1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)" is a song by the English new wave band Spandau Ballet, released on 10 July 1981 as the first single from their second album, Diamond.

While Spandau Ballet was completing their first album, Journeys to Glory, their guitarist/songwriter Gary Kemp was noticing a renewed interest in funk around Soho, which led him to come up with "Glow",[4] the double A-side companion to "Muscle Bound", the third song released from their debut.

[7] The club focused on funk music, with one of its most popular songs being "Wheel Me Out" by Was (Not Was), which Kemp felt driven to imitate in his own composing as a means of proving that Spandau Ballet was still in the thick of Soho nightlife.

1", even provided some scanty directions to Le Beat Route in the form of a rap that would give Kemp a rare solo vocal.

[6] Burgess had just developed the Simmons SDS-V electronic drum kit, which Spandau Ballet drummer John Keeble used on "Chant No.

[10][11] Kemp described the recording of the music as "fast and easy", but Burgess had trouble getting lead singer Tony Hadley to convey the darker side of the material with a softer tone of voice than usual and eventually succeeded by having him lie down to do so.

Red Starr of Smash Hits magazine had some reservations but an overall positive response to the 7-inch single: "Actually this is easily their best effort to date, despite the Pearl and Dean cinema ad beginning and Tony Hadley's pompous foghorn vocals."

1', the one Spandau tune to pay tithes direct to disco convention, has the most incisions: a grotesquely doctored trombone on the intro, the sticking groove trick Burgess seems to love, and the beat dissected around the chant much as 'Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel' confounded any rational dance step.

[18] In 2009 Dylan Jones put the song in the context of the political climate in England at the time of its release, writing, "'Chant No.1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)' was, in its own way, as important to the summer of 1981 as 'Ghost Town' by the Specials - a canny mix of contemporary funk and bottom-heavy agitprop, the perfect encapsulation of the new decade's obsession with fiddling while Brixton and Toxteth burned."

1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On)" was released on 10 July 1981,[21] and Kemp recalled taking the 12-inch single to Le Beat Route as soon as they had a copy so that the DJ could start playing it.

There they encountered former Blitz regular and up-and-coming Culture Club vocalist Boy George, who "sat in his catty booth [and] admitted to liking it, although he drew the line at dancing.

[31] Kemp described Hadley's character as "a strung-out lounge lizard" who drives through Soho to the club and is greeted by the owner before entering to take the mike.

[38] In 2001, Billboard magazine credited the band with giving London-based DJ/producer/remixer Rui Da Silva the honor of becoming the first Portuguese to reach number one on the UK Singles Chart.

by Bob the Builder, which was the biggest-selling single of the year in the UK and spent three weeks at number one, but the delay caused by the failed negotiations instead resulted in the Da Silva hit's movement up the chart coinciding with the theme song's waning popularity.