One of the most beautiful songs on the biggest-selling album in history was never meant for Michael Jackson. It was never meant for anybody. It was written by a keyboard player trying to comfort his little girl after a bad day at school, recorded as a rough demo, and it only reached Quincy Jones because somebody grabbed the wrong cassette and a tape deck flipped itself over. That song is “Human Nature.”
It starts in 1981 with Steve Porcaro, the keyboard player from the band Toto. His daughter Heather, in first grade at the time, came home from school crying. A boy had pushed her off the slide, and she kept asking her father the same question. Why? Porcaro did what dads do. He gave her three reasons. One, the boy probably likes you. Two, people can be strange. And three, that is just human nature.
Michael Jackson – Human Nature (Official Video)
The conversation stayed with him. Later, while Toto was in the studio mixing a song of their own called “Africa”, he sat down at a synthesizer and the melody came out of him. He recorded a rough demo on a cassette. It was barely a song at all — one verse repeated, and a chorus that was just the word “why” over and over, with nonsense syllables filling the gaps. He never finished it. Toto were offered it and passed, because they wanted stadium rock. It should have died right there.
Here is where the accident happens. Porcaro’s bandmate and housemate David Paich had been writing songs on spec for Quincy Jones, who was putting together an album for Michael Jackson. Paich asked Porcaro to copy his tracks onto a cassette and send them over. A messenger was already at the door — and Porcaro had run out of blank tapes.
Michael Jackson – (Story Behind) Human Nature
So he flipped over the tape that already had his unfinished “Human Nature” demo on it, recorded Paich’s songs on the other side, labeled that side as the one to play, and sent it off.
Quincy Jones listened to Paich’s songs and decided none of them fit. Then he did not stop the tape. The deck had auto-reverse, a bit of technology almost nobody remembers now, which automatically played the other side when the first ran out. After a long stretch of silence, out of nowhere, came a voice singing “why, why.” Jones has described the moment many times, and he never got over it. “I get goosebumps talking about it.”
He rang the next day raving about this “why, why” song. It reportedly took David Paich about half an hour to convince him it was not his. Jones brought in lyricist John Bettis, who had written for the Carpenters, to finish the words properly, and Porcaro had no complaints at all. “John just elevated it. He gave it a narrative. He gave it a story.”
“Human Nature” became the last song added to Thriller, pushing another finished track called “Carousel” off the album entirely. It went Top 10 in America. It is now one of the most sampled and most covered things Jackson ever recorded. And it exists because a six-year-old got pushed off a slide, her dad ran out of blank cassettes, and a tape deck turned itself over in an empty room.