"HIStory" was written and composed by Michael Jackson,
James Harris III and
Terry Lewis. It was released as the thirteenth track on the studio album
HIStory, but was not released as a single. The song sampled multiple musical compositions and historical audio quotes, all of which were dispersed throughout the track. Early in the track, one included quotes from an interview with a young Michael Jackson from 1970. Musical compositions sampled include "
Beethoven Lives Upstairs" and "The Great Gate of Kiev" from Mussorgsky's
Pictures at an Exhibition. In reissues of the album, the
Pictures at an Exhibition piece was replaced by a similar improvised orchestra piece, but the original sample was used in Jackson's live performances in the
HIStory World Tour. Audio quotes sampled were
Lowell Thomas's "
Charles Lindbergh Report" of Lindbergh's 1927 landing in Paris, a report on
Hank Aaron,
Ted Kennedy's 1968
eulogy for brother Robert F. Kennedy, the 1939 "
Farewell to Baseball" by
Lou Gehrig, the 1940 "Greetings to the Children of England" radio address by
Princess Elizabeth and
Princess Margaret, quotes from
Muhammad Ali,
Thomas Edison, and Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 speech "
I Have a Dream". Music writer
Mark Sinker described "HIStory" as less a song than an extended
sound montage of "overlapping sound-clips: national anthems,
martial music, selected radio announcements at totemic moments, the speeches of the great, Edison testing the first phonograph,
Neil Armstrong about to moonwalk, a chorus that's a rewrite of '
Blowin' in the Wind'. As [an] artist's signature, a clip of a child's voice: 'Whatever I sing, that's what I really mean. I don't sing it if I don't mean it'."
Billboard writer Morgan Eros included the song in a list of those which sample King Jr. He described the
HIStory album as "something of a head-scratcher, in which a troubled celebrity responds to his legal problems by constructing a pyramid to himself." In this regard, he deemed the title track, with its samples of King,
Malcolm X, Edison, Armstrong and Ali, to "[play] like an attempt to seal Jackson in the pantheon of 20th century greats, as the ground was crumbling beneath his feet." In a separate list of songs that
sample King's "I Have a Dream" speech,
MTV News deemed "HIStory" to be a "magisterial
pop tune, which opens with a
royal horn flourish and features bits of speeches about Hank Aaron, Robert Kennedy and snippets of Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X." In 1997, Jackson issued the remix album
Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix. Remixes were done by
Tony Moran,
Mark Picchiotti, and
The Ummah, although only one of Tony Moran's remixes, titled "HIStory (Tony Moran's HIStory Lesson)" was included on the album. This and the rest of the remixes were included on various commercial and promotional releases of the double A-side release "HIStory" / "Ghosts", the second single from the album. In his British chart column for
Dotmusic,
James Masterton wrote that, following the success of Jackson's previous single "
Blood on the Dance Floor", the release of the "HIStory" remix "further halts Jacko's early-decade slide into self-cliche and instead presents him as the master of the late 90s pop record."
Billboard reviewer
Larry Flick wrote: "By rebuilding the song into a hands-in-the-air
disco anthem, Tony Moran provides the remix that will appeal to many listeners." ==Music video==