You all know how much I love "Weird Al" Yankovic—but before "Weird Al," there was Tom Lehrer.
Tom Lehrer passed away July 26, 2025, at the age of 97. I missed it because I was in my summer grieving period, 🙄 but every once in a while, I would Google "Tom Lehrer" to see if he was doing anything or commenting on anything. He had long since stopped performing and recording—he released only 37 songs over a period of about two decades—and he publicly stated that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Novel Peace Prize," citing that as the reason he stopped writing songs. Yankovic even called him the "J.D. Salinger of demented music" for having stepped out of the spotlight. But I never stopped hoping he would comment on the news of the day.
I was first introduced to Lehrer in the 70s through the songs he wrote and recorded for The Electric Company (my favorite being "Silent E"). But I didn't know he both wrote and recorded those songs until much, much later. Over the next several years, various people would tell me about another Tom Lehrer song, so when Rhino Entertainment released a box set of Lehrer's complete works, I scooped it up immediately. Disc 1 contains 23 songs he recorded in the studio plus two unreleased gems, but Discs 2 and 3 are the meat of that boxed set. Disc 2 contains the same songs—but recorded live. His commentary introducing each song is priceless. Disc 3 contains the most political of his works from his album That Was the Year That Was. You really have to be a student of history (or alive in the 60s) to really get the brilliance of that album. Disc 3 also contains five songs from The Electric Company ... and only then did I realize I'd been a fan practically all my life.
Lehrer's legacy continues in comedians such as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah, who also critique societal and political issues through humor. Their no-holds-barred satire and subversive wit can easily be traced back to Lehrer.
As for "Weird Al," not only has he come right out and said Lehrer was one of his musical influences, but also one has only to compare track lists to see it—or should I say hear it. Both have an incredible gift for rhyme, inappropriate lyrics and song topics (Lehrer: "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," Yankovic "Good Old Days") as well as a certain irreverence toward ... well ... just about everything.
Lehrer also inspired Randy Newman—the brilliant composer and songwriter who you might know from a number of Pixar films as well as the song "I Love L.A." Newman once said of Lehrer, "He's one of the great American songwriters without a doubt, right up there with everybody, the top guys. As a lyricist, as good as there's been in the last half of the 20th century." (https://nyfos.org/tom-lehrer-poisoning-pigeons-park)
I could say more, but let me direct you to the official obituary as well as this opinion column in The Washington Post (both of which I got "gift" links for, so you should be able to read them even without a subscription). They tell you far more about his life than I possibly could.
I'll just close with a little list:
- I can sing all of Lehrer's songs by heart, but "The Elements" is my proudest accomplishment. ("The Elements" is simply a list of all of the elements on the period table at the time Lehrer wrote it set to music by Gilbert and Sullivan.) Watch Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) sing it here.
- I'm partial to the songs from That Was the Year That Was. "The Vatican Rag," widely considered his most controversial song, is on that album, along with "Smut" (in which he rhymes "philately" with "Lady Chatterley") and "New Math," all three favorites.
- "Clementine" is another favorite. It is simply the old folk song "Clementine" reimagined as if it had been written by Cole Porter, Mozart, a "cool school" of composer from the 60s, or (my favorite) Gilbert and Sullivan.
- As a choir nerd, I love "Selling Out." It starts with one melody, then introduces a second one, playing the two together. These are followed by a third and fourth melody—all four completely different—and closes with all four melodies together. This song is a real showcase to his musical genius.
- As a Christmas music nerd, I love "A Christmas Carol." More on rhyme below, but my favorite rhyme in this song is:
- Relations, sparing no expense'll
Send some useless old utensil
Or a matching pen and pencil - I've mentioned Lehrer's rhymes several times, but man, that guy could RHYME. I did a quick Google search to see if there was a definitive list of Lehrer's best rhymes, and I got sucked into a Reddit rabbit hold with everyone picking their favorites. In going through that list, I decided my favorite is from a song called "When You Are Old and Grey." Right in the middle of that song is just this long list of things that go wrong as one gets older, 16 lines all ending in -ility words. Brilliant.
- I wanted to leave you with my favorite Tom Lehrer song, but I just couldn't decide. That said, I would be remiss if I didn't give you a link to one other of Lehrer's most popular songs, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." Is it appropriate? Absolutely not. Is it still hilarious? Absolutely. And that's the magic of Tom Lehrer.
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