2025, Media, Music, Poems, Songs, Words

Tom Lehrer – RIP

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Like many musical artists, Tom Lehrer was introduced to me on the LGMS.  I loved his funny songs and they way he crafted them with language and great satire.  This is probably my favorite:

Sadly, Tom passed away four days ago at the age of 97.  He was born in New York City and began his musical studies when he was seven.  He entered Harvard at the age of 15, studying mathematics as well as entertaining his fellow students with his comic songs.  His mathematics career and his music career existed together for many years.  His last performance was in 1972 and he taught until 2003.

Another of his most popular songs puts the table of elements to a Gilbert & Sullivan tune:

There haven’t been too many artists who can skewer the world quite the way he could.  His voice will be missed.

Do you have a favorite Tom Lehrer song?  Or another satirist?

31 thoughts on “Tom Lehrer – RIP”

  1. Rise and Sing Along, Baboons,

    My favorite of his was probably “The Elements” just because of the lightening speed that floated through the radio when TLGMS played this. It always got my attention and made me laugh.

    I had not known much about him, but what a gifted soul he was! And such a long life. Keeping up with him must have been a full time job. My sister used to be a TAG teacher (Talented andGifted) so she assisted me at times in making decisions about my son who had the same kind of head for math. She always told me that musical talent and math resided side by side in many gifted people because music is really math. You add a gift for words to that and you get Tom Lehrer. VS, do you know why he stopped entertaining?

    About 30 years ago, my son went through a Weird Al Yankovich stage, often sharing his songs. He is another fun satirist.

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    1. So true about music and math being interrelated. When I was teaching, I always told my students that reading the music is similar to doing math in your head. 4/4 time is one measure divided into fourths, so each quarter note lasts one fourth of the time it takes to play that measure, etc. And notes are all about frequency, which is the number of Hz., and how you can tell if someone’s instrument is out of tune. If A440 is in tune, then A441 and A339 are not. Etc., etc.

      Chris ( who was pretty good in both music and math back in the day)

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    2. From what I can find, it seems that he was always more drawn to his academic career than his musical career. I’ve also seen a few commentaries about how he felt that the world had gotten to the point that couldn’t be improved by satire. Apparently he was really disillusioned when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.

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    3. Elijah Wald did an interview with Tom Lehrer back in 1997, and had this to say about it: “Very sorry to hear that Tom Lehrer is gone — I did this interview with him when I was at the Boston Globe, and he did the unique thing of calling me when it ran and saying he hadn’t wanted to seem to be influencing me before it ran, but could he take me out for dinner. So he did, and it was very pleasant. He wasn’t wild or funny, just very smart, low-key, and good company…”

      Here’s the link to the interview, which gives some good insights into the kind of person Lehrer was:
      https://www.elijahwald.com/Lehrer97.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawL3HzJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHsfemJR-OAaLR7dACrnZmoGYQd3lBypcUkpj4pyowkCEbTz0AnVEC67fMCXM_aem_-LFiWAnf_K40QAaRHrRWTw

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  3. Gotta be “The Vatican Rag.” I remember my dad (a lapsed Catholic since high school) howling with laughter when he heard it.

    I also love “The Elements.” Such a brilliant arrangement of each word to make a “verse.” Lehrer reminded me of George Carlin, who was also a master manipulator of the English language. I wouldn’t be surprised if Carlin got some inspiration or ideas from Lehrer in the ’60s when he was going through his comedic transformation to his “hippy style.”

    Chris in Owatonna (thinking I’ll listen to one of my Lehrer CDs today.)

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  5. love that one
    my folks were in church organazations and had meetings at rotating homes and tom leher albums and alan sherman albums were frequently brought along and played for the group. i remember sitting at the tip of stairs listening as the meetings happened at our house.
    i wonder why he stopped cranking out the tunes. he was gifted and joyful and i cant imagine he would ever run out of topics or audiences.
    maybe a new one will surface soon. i cant imagine his topics for new songs though can you?

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      1. We will pray with Aphrodite,
        We will pray with Aphrodite,
        She wears that see-through nightie,
        And it’s good enough for me.

        We will pray with Zarathustra,
        We’ll pray just like we use ta,
        I’m a Zarathustra booster,
        And it’s good enough for me.

        We will pray with those Egyptians,
        Build pyramids to put our crypts in,
        Cover subways with inscriptions,
        And it’s good enough for me.

        We will pray with those old druids,
        They drink fermented fluids,
        Waltzing naked though the woo-ids,
        And it’s good enough for me.

        source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/pete_seeger/old_time_religion

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  8. A friend came to visit Sandy yesterday, which only takes 3-4 minutes. So then she attacked me for belonging to a church that accepts everyone. Old time self righteous timing.

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    1. Dear Clyde, I wish the friend had not done that. It is demoralizing to understand that part of the human race is so rigid and judgmental. It has to be difficult enough to go through this with Sandy.

      That said, I often judge the other judgers harshly then I have to back out of that, accept them as they are, and distance myself.

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  9. I was introduced to Tom Lehrer’s songs by Nina, a Danish friend, in Moscow; Nina was crazy about him, and had two of his albums. It took listening to them several times before I could catch all the words, some of which I had to look up because I had never heard them before.

    I can’t remember whether Elijah Wald mentions it in the article from 1997 that Tom worked a couple of summers as a camp counselor. Stephen Sondheim was one of his campers. Also, while Tom was a student a Harvard, Irving Kaplansky, the father of Lucy Kaplansky, was one of his professors.

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  11. So much good music today!

    I remember my friend David singing ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park’ and that was my intro to remember him by name.
    Probably heard a few songs here and there.

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  13. Don’t miss PJ’s link to an article about Mr. Lehrer if you can help it, but if you don’t have time, here’s my favorite passage:
    “…Even in the songs, I wasn’t making fun, for example, of love. I was making fun of a certain kind of love song. It was hypocrisy that I was aiming at, not the emotion itself. I’m all for love. Love is great. But it sometimes becomes totally unrealistic. I’m not a passionate person by nature, so I have trouble with opera and gospel and things like that. In fact, I’d say that my most profound emotion is chagrin.”

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