The Story Behind: "Human" by The Killers

Human is a song by American rock band the Killers. The song was released on September 22, 2008 as the first single from their third studio record Day & Age.  

Background

The song was the very first song written for their new upcoming album. It was written when the band released their compilation album Sawdust in 2007, which was produced by a friend of the band, Stuart Price, whom also worked with Madonna and many more.  

Singer Brandon Flowers stated in a Rolling Stone interview: "When we met him, we were just having dinner with him in London talking about our new compilation album Sawdust. Later in the dinner I just asked him, 'what are you doing after dinner?' He said he was free, so we went to his house where he has a studio and we recorded 'Human.' We just knew that it sounded so good—we only spent a couple hours on the recording, and it wasn't much different from what it is like now." 

The band and Price were all very pleased with the song, and decided to not only collaborate on the compilation album, but on their new album – Day & Age. 

The Lyrics

The lyrics in the song talk about the problems in today's society and morals. Flowers stated in an interview: "It's part of that. I'll say it's a mild social statement and I'm leaving it at that. I don't wanna be a preacher. The devotion part, I think of my parents being married for 45 years and how that's a dying thing and I'm trying to hold onto some of those things. I am very old-fashioned, I guess. And the older I get, the worse it is. But I dunno if that's what people want to hear!"  

Many fans of the Killers were also very confused with the line in the chorus (which is "Are we human/ Or are we dancer?"), because of the grammatical error (dancer in singular instead of plural), with some fans claiming that Flowers is actually singing “denser” instead of dancer. 

MTV later asked Flowers about the line in the chorus, to which he responded: "It's taken from a quote by [Hunter S.] Thompson: 'We're raising a generation of dancers,' and I took it and ran. I guess it bothers people that it's not grammatically correct, but I think I'm allowed to do whatever I want." He also added: “'Denser'? I hadn't heard that one. I don't like 'denser.'" 

Reception/Music Video

The song reached number 6 on the Billboard’s Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart, peaked at number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart.  

The music video for the song was released in October 2008 and was directed by Danny Drysdale. It features the band playing the song in the Goblin Valley State Park in Utah. The portraits of band members drawn by Paul Normansell are shown in the video, when the band members hold it up against their faces (the portrait of guitarist Dave Keuning was also used as the single artwork). Besides the band playing the video shows footage of cougars and eagles as well as shots of the desert with the setting sunset at the end of the video.