Human
by The Killers
- 136
- BPM
- Bb major
- Key
- 6B
- Camelot
- 56
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Brandon Flowers described "Human" as "Johnny Cash meets the Pet Shop Boys". The Killers created it with Stuart Price while working with him on the Sawdust compilation. It changed very little afterward. Flowers left it off Sawdust because, he said, "it was too good". Price co-produced the finished track, which became the first single from their third album, Day & Age.
It was released in November 2008 on a seven-inch picture disc with the B-side "A Crippling Blow". It reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart and number 2 in the Netherlands, their first top 10 there. In the US it peaked at number 32 on the Hot 100. The cover portrait is of guitarist Dave Keuning, one of four drawn by Paul Normansell.
The chorus line "Are we human, or are we dancer?" set off an online debate over whether it said "dancer", "dancers" or "denser". The band's biography says it was inspired by a remark from Hunter S. Thompson about America raising a generation of dancers. Flowers said anyone who could not put the dance beat and the chorus together was an idiot. Danny Drysdale directed the video in Goblin Valley State Park, Utah, where the band plays among amplifiers in the desert.
Human runs at 136 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.76 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 441 ms. It is in Bb major, Camelot 6B, which shares its notes with G minor and mixes cleanly with Eb major and F major.
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