Songfacts®:

• "Human Wheels" is John Mellencamp's take on the circle of life. The lyric is based on a poem written by his friend George Green that Green read at his grandfather's funeral. Mellencamp added the chorus, tying Green's ruminations on death together by likening our time here on Earth to a wheel that constantly spins.
  
  George Green co-wrote a number of songs with Mellencamp, including "Rain On The Scarecrow" and "Hurts So Good."
• The lines:
  
  The dust to which this flesh shall return
  It is the ancient, dreaming dust of God
  
  Are a reference to a passage in the Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:20, which states:
  
  All are from the dust
  And to dust all return
  
  This passage inspired the Kansas song "Dust In The Wind."
• This is the lead single and title track to Mellencamp's 12th album. He continued to resist the temptations of modern production and keep his sound rootsy and organic, in this case featuring a mandolin. His '90s output wasn't as popular as his '80s material, but it matured with his audience.
• Unlike, say, Meat Loaf, Mellencamp didn't make a habit of kissing his backup singers for dramatic effect, but in the video for "Human Wheels," he and his longtime backing singer Pat Peterson share a smooch. Mellencamp had recently married the model Elaine Irwin, so this was pure acting, likely to make the point that interracial couples are a welcome part of the human tapestry. Early on, he was in an integrated band called Crepe Soul and saw firsthand what his black bandmates had to deal with.