Human and Dancer Aren't Mutually Exclusive

According to a 2008 Rolling Stone interview, in The Killers' hit dance single "Human," the first lyric in the chorus is actually "Are we human or are we dancer?" It wasn't "denser" or "dancers," despite what the great internet debate was arguing.

The lyric itself was apparently inspired by the Hunter S. Thompson claiming that America was raising "a generation of dancers." While Thompson's quote was grammatically correct, Brandon Flowers "took it and ran" and made it less "correct" because grammar is irrelevant.

The important thing about the use of "dancer" versus the grammatically correct "dancers" or "denser" is that it makes "dancer" and "human" both adjectives. With the addition of the "s" to "dancer", the last word in the lyric becomes a noun. You lose the parallelism. When you use "denser," the song can completely change meaning. But when "dancer" is used an adjective, it becomes a state of being and the lyric states a supposed truth: one can't be human and also be "dancer."

But what even is "dancer"?

When I still lived in Wisconsin about a decade ago, I was enrolled at the The Backstage Studio in Ripon, Wisconsin  to learn how to dance. Most of it was fairly simple: shovels, ball-and-chains that resembled the "Charlie Brown" from the Cha-Cha Slide, twirling and being cute. I was a good dancer for a chubby eight-year-old. However, I stopped dancing when I moved to Kentucky because my parents claimed that there wasn't any local dance studios in Winchester, but I've always kind of missed it.

Today, an old friend of mine from the dance studio posted some pictures from this year's dance recital, ten years since my last recital. The same teacher was there and everything. It was sort of weird thinking that since I've moved past the Mason-Dixon line, this little dance studio with a small and, in retrospect, kind of sketchy waiting room and a shiny wooden floor, stayed alive with a lot of the same people. It stayed alive.

In that moment, I knew I was still "dancer." I was no longer a dancer, but I was still "dancer." While I could never, and still can't, do a cartwheel and I've always been pretty clumsy, I still had the spirit of "dancer." I still liked to leap onto my wing and spin around. I still twisted in place when I was waiting for something. I still felt music pump through my veins more than blood sometimes.

But was that what Flowers or Thompson had in mind?

Maybe "dancer" meant a carefree young person who didn't listen to the words but swayed to a beat because understanding causes problems and ignorance is bliss. Maybe "dancer" meant somebody who took on the world and made it their oyster after leaving everything behind. Maybe "dancer" meant a lover, not a fighter. But what does that make somebody who's "human"? Is that somebody who is calculating and cautious and weighed down with problems? Is it somebody who thinks? Is it somebody who is fighter?

And why are they mutually exclusive?

That's the thing, I don't think they are. Even when I don't even really know what Thompson or Flowers had in mind, I don't think anybody is 100% human or 100% dancer. It's just one of those things.

The second lyric in the chorus is "my signs are vital; my hands are cold." Is being "alive" and feeling "alive"
the same thing? Maybe that's what Flowers is getting at. Maybe humans just exist while dancers feel "alive."

But what a better time to feel alive?