Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist

Tom Lehrer died final week­finish, greater than 4 a long time after rumors of his dying had first gone into cir­cu­la­tion. He did­n’t each­er to con­tra­dict them, pub­licly declare­ing that he fig­ured they’d “lower down on the spam.” That quip proved not simply that he was nonetheless alive, however that his wit was intact. And it was his wit, com­bined with a facil­i­ty on the piano, that made him well-known: mer­ci­much less­ly sat­i­riz­ing each­factor from the Boy Scouts to Har­vard, his alma mater, to New Math to Vat­i­can II to World Warfare III, his dwell­ly show-tune pas­tich­es grew to become defin­ing items of Chilly Warfare-era com­e­dy — or in any case, defin­ing items of ear­ly Chilly Warfare-era com­e­dy.

A professional­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics for many of his profession, he per­fashioned and file­ed music most­ly within the 9­teen-fifties and 6­ties, start­ning together with his first con­cert, giv­en as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in 1950, and finish­ing with anoth­er in Copen­hagen in 1967.

There was additionally an ear­ly-sev­en­ties coda within the kind of some songs writ­ten for PBS’ chil­dren’s present The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny and a per­for­mance at a George S. McGov­ern ral­ly. However by then, the body of Amer­i­can cul­ture had shift­ed. “The Viet­nam Warfare is what modified it,” Lehrer stated in 1981. “Each­physique acquired earnest. My pur­pose was to make peo­ple snicker and never applaud. If the audi­ence applauds, they’re simply present­ing they agree with me”: an obser­va­tion at the moment’s would-be satirists would do properly to keep in mind.

Whether or not or not you’ve any aspi­ra­tions of your individual in that tra­di­tion, you possibly can lis­ten by means of the whole­ty of Lehrer’s file­ed work in the YouTube playlist above and below­stand why his com­ic star burned so vivid­ly — and, by means of the close to­ly six­ty years which have fol­lowed, nev­er fairly burned out. Although clear­ly writ­ten within the spir­it of Eisen­how­er-era lib­er­al­ism, these songs (launched by their creator into the pub­lic area just a few years in the past) don’t shrink back from the absur­di­ties of what Lehrer him­self wouldn’t, with a straight face, be capable to name the human con­di­tion. First check­ed out on cam­pus, in addition they devel­oped an ear­ly type of what we’ve come to think about because the “col­lege” sen­si­bil­i­ty in pop­u­lar music. In some sense, Lehrer nev­er left that method of see­ing the world behind — nor, like a real stu­dent, did he ever get round to fin­ish­ing his Ph.D.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Lehrer Releas­es His All of Catchy and Sav­age Musi­cal Satire Into the Pub­lic Area

Tom Lehrer’s Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly and Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Inclined Singing and Tune­writ­ing, Ani­mat­ed

Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chem­i­cal Ele­ments to the Tune of Gilbert & Sul­li­van

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Beginning­day with Tune. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune “The Ele­ments”

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.