Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" Deserves Way More Respect

If you ask the average person to name a song from Thriller, you'll get the obvious ones. Billie Jean. Beat It. The title track. P.Y.T. Maybe Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'. Almost nobody mentions "Human Nature." It sits at track seven on a record packed with cultural monuments, and it gets passed over by casual listeners every time. That's a problem. Because "Human Nature" might quietly be the most beautiful song Michael Jackson ever recorded — and the story of how it ended up on the best-selling album in human history is one of the strangest accidents in pop music. It almost didn't make the cut. It almost wasn't even heard by Quincy Jones in the first place. The man who wrote the original melody had no intention of ever playing it for him. And only an obscure piece of 1980s cassette technology forced the song into existence. In this video we walk through the full story: — Steve Porcaro, the 24-year-old Toto keyboardist who wrote the demo in 1981 to comfort his five-year-old daughter Heather after a boy pushed her off a playground slide — Why Toto rejected the song before it ever left Porcaro's house — The cassette tape with no blank space — and how Porcaro flipped it over and recorded David Paich's two demos on the unused B-side, with "Human Nature" still on the other side — The auto-reverse cassette deck at Quincy Jones' house that flipped the tape automatically — Quincy's exact "goosebumps" reaction to hearing the placeholder "why, why" vocal — John Bettis — the Carpenters lyricist Quincy called in to finish the words — The two days it took Bettis to complete the lyrics — The brief retitle to "I Like Living This Way" before Quincy switched it back — The single take at Westlake Studios — Michael had been asleep on the couch ten minutes earlier — The song "Carousel" that "Human Nature" replaced at the last minute on the final tracklist — Why Epic Records never released it as a single in the UK — Sheryl Crow's 2010 Rolling Stone quote: "He'd cry, and those tears were so directly linked to the wounds that drove him to anesthetize himself" — Michael's own description of the song in Moonwalk: "music with wings" — Miles Davis covering it on You're Under Arrest (1985) — Teddy Riley sampling it for SWV's "Right Here (Human Nature Remix)" — #2 on the Hot 100, seven weeks at #1 on R&B — Nas building "It Ain't Hard to Tell" from Illmatic (1994) on the same sample — John Mayer playing an instrumental guitar version at Michael's Staples Center memorial on July 7, 2009 — "the presence of his absence" — Justin Timberlake covering it nightly on the 20/20 Experience World Tour — Big Sean, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Glee, and dozens more It is, in a real sense, the most accidentally great song on Thriller. Jackson didn't write it. Quincy almost didn't hear it. Toto rejected it. The lyrics were finished by a stranger. And yet what survived all those near misses is arguably the most emotionally pure four minutes of music Michael Jackson ever sang. The next time it comes on a quiet playlist somewhere, don't skip it. Sit with it. Listen for the "why, why" that started as a placeholder and ended up being the whole point. #MichaelJackson #HumanNature #Thriller #StevePorcaro #QuincyJones #KingOfPop #MJ