Songfacts®:

• "Human Touch," issued as a single in March 1992, was Bruce Springsteen's first release since his Tunnel Of Love album in 1988. A lot had changed for him in the interim. He had divorced his first wife, Julianne Phillips, and married Patti Scialfa, who sings background on this song. They had two children together by this point (they had another in 1994).
  
  Springsteen said the song is about "searchin' for the bottom line," a common theme in his lyric. But unlike many of his earlier songs where he finds salvation though music, here it's all about interpersonal connection, reflecting his new life as a family man.
• Springsteen wrote this song in 1990 but it wasn't released until two years later. The Human Touch album was set for release sooner, but then Bruce started working on more songs and decided to make another album, Lucky Town, and issue both albums at the same time, something Guns N' Roses did in 1991 with their Use Your Illusion albums. From a marketing standpoint, it was a miscalculation. Human Touch and Lucky Town were issued simultaneously on March 31, 1992, but didn't generate the hype he expected. Combined, they sold less than his previous album, Tunnel Of Love.
• Springsteen broke up his fabled E Street Band in 1989, but he did retain the services of keyboard player Roy Bittan, who played on this song. The other musicians were drummer Jeff Porcaro of Toto and bass player Randy Jackson, who later became a judge on American Idol.
  
  When Springsteen toured to support the album, Roy Bittan came along and Patti Scialfa appeared at some shows, but the other musicians on stage weren't part of the album - a departure from the days when the E Street Band would make and album together and then all join the tour to support it. Springsteen's next tour, in 1995, was solo acoustic.
• "Human Touch" holds up pretty well compared to other songs Springsteen released in the '90s. It's the only song on the album to make his 1995 Greatest Hits compilation, and one of the few songs from this era that he continued to perform after he regrouped the E Street Band in 1999.
• The cinematographer on the video, which has lots of tight shots of Bruce singing in the shadows, was Daniel Pearl, who a decade earlier worked on the first attempt at Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark" video. That one didn't go well, with Springsteen walking out after a dispute with Pearl over the lighting. In the ensuing years, Springsteen came to realize that Pearl was correct in how he wanted to light him, so he signed him up to work on "Human Touch."
• The song was a modest hit, reaching #16 in the US, but the follow-up single, "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)," stalled at #68. Springsteen, for the first time since the early '70s, was having a hard time selling albums and filling up stadiums. He had been rather private to this point, but he started doing more interviews and engaging in more promotion, including a May 1992 appearance on Saturday Night Live, his first-ever TV performance in the US. He gradually got back in the public eye and earned a great deal of acclaim for his 1994 single "Streets Of Philadelphia," but he downsized with his next album, the all-acoustic The Ghost of Tom Joad.
• You know who else has a song called "Human Touch?" Rick Springfield, who because of his name is often inadvertently called Rick Springsteen or otherwise mixed up with Bruce. His "Human Touch" was released first: it went to #18 in 1983.