It was about this episode with my daughter and Quincy asked me, 'Do you mind if I let someone take a stab at the first lyrics?' He loved the title. David said Quincy called him the next morning, and it took him 20 minutes to finally tell him, 'I think you're talking about one of Steve's tunes.'Īnyway, we started working on it, and Toto was on the road at one point and Quincy said, 'I need some lyrics now.' And I finished up the lyrics as best I could on a bus ride and sent them in. He thought it was a David Paich tune, you know, for a real long time. … I believe what happened is he just let the tape run and auto-reverse kicked in (playing the other side of the tape). I would have never handed that in a million years to a Quincy Jones. I had no intention of Quincy hearing “Human Nature.” That was unfinished demo. So I turned it over, rewound it, put a new label on it and put 'David's Things' on the A side of the cassette. Quincy's guy’s on his way over here to pick up some stuff.' So, it turned out that was my last cassette. I'd just thrown it down on cassette when David had called down to me and said, 'Hey, those two grooves we're doing last night.

We had, you know, all these little short 15-minute cassettes. … So anyway, I had just kind of finished my demo of 'Human Nature' and I'd recorded it. Quincy would send a runner over every day for a while there to pick up whatever we'd been working on. … I was helping him record grooves and jams and something that Quincy might dig. We've done a bunch together, and I was already in studio doing synth overdubs on different tracks on “Thriller.” He'd been asking David Paich, who is the well-known songwriter in Toto, for songs. After that, Quincy just started hiring me by myself to work on his different projects. David Foster brought me in as a synth programmer. SP: I started working with Quincy (Jones) and Michael (Jackson) on the “Off the Wall” album. What happens next is insane, it's almost hard to believe. Anyway, I went right out into the studio where the piano was and it kind of all came at once.īH: You know, some songs are meant to find their home. SP: (I was) just trying to explain to her that the boy probably liked her. And she kept asking me “Why?” and it was just ringing in my head. She'd fallen off a slide and a boy had hit her, and she kept asking me “Why?” You know, she was like in second grade or something.

We had one more mix to do, which was the song “Africa.” I got to the studio, they were just putting the mix up in the booth, and I had just seen my daughter, who had a real rough day at school. Steve Porcaro: I was on my way to the studio. It's just fascinating. What was the story of 'Human Nature'?

Because we're going to look at it from both ends. Porcaro told the story behind the song to Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.īart Herbison: I think we're pushing 300 episodes of Story Behind the Song. Yours is the first we're going to do twice.

The story of how the ballad - penned by Toto’s Steve Porcaro and hit songwriter John Bettis - ended up on “Thriller” is tangled up in analog tape, as well as a rough day Porcaro’s daughter had on the playground at school. In the digital age “Human Nature” never would have made its way to Michael Jackson. Watch Video: Story Behind the Song: 'Human Nature'

Mj human nature remix