Musical satirist Tom Lehrer, the composer of “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”, “The Vatican Rag,” and many, many other memorable tunes, has passed away at the age of 97. He retired from writing songs in the 60s, and even went so far as to transfer the rights to his music into the public domain in 2020. You can read the NYT obituary via archive.is here. It contains a good summary of his attitude toward his career:
Mr. Lehrer’s lyrics were nimble, sometimes salacious and almost always sardonic, sung to music that tended to be maddeningly cheerful. Accompanying himself on piano, he performed in nightclubs, in concert and on records that his admirers purchased, originally by mail order only, in the hundreds of thousands.But his entertainment career ultimately took a back seat to academia. In his heart he never quit his day job; he just took a few sabbaticals.He stopped performing in 1960 after only a few years, resumed briefly in 1965 and then stopped for good in 1967. His music was ultimately just a momentary detour in an academic career that included teaching posts at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, and even a stint with the Atomic Energy Commission.As popular as his songs were, Mr. Lehrer never felt entirely comfortable performing them. “I don’t feel the need for anonymous affection,” he told The New York Times in 2000. “If they buy my records, I love that. But I don’t think I need people in the dark applauding.”
97 is a good, long life, but the passing of a real American genius always causes a pang.
Here’s my personal favorite of his:
And here’s British actor Daniel Radcliffe (most famous for playing Harry Potter, but a self-described Lehrer superfan), performing “The Elements” on Graham Norton’s chat show a few years back:
I know a lot of Jackals are fans of his. Open thread, with the hope you’ll all share songs, anecdotes, etc.
UPDATE to add this very funny anecdote:
2 Chainz sampled Tom Lehrer's The Old Dope Peddler 60 years after it had been recorded. Lehrer's response to the license request: "As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?"
RIP TOM
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog.lol) 27 July 2025 at 18:17
Chetan Murthy
Oh man. Oh no. Everybody has to go, but but but ……
Rest in peace, Prof. Lehrer. So many songs, soooo many songs!
Steve LaBonne
I hope the sad news revives interest in his songs among the younger folks.
Pete Downunder
I’m a Lehrer super fan. Very sad news indeed. I still know many of his songs off by heart. 97 is good innings as they say down here, but he will be missed.
trollhattan
I like to think that listening to and trying to figure out the humor in Lehrer’s songs had as much impact on me as going to school. Such a wry and clever man. (My bro regrets never taking one of his classes in college.)
r.i.p.
Peke Daddy
My personal favorite.
youtu.be/pvhYqeGp_Do?si=ywRAsFlOg3YL1c6h
trollhattan
Bwa-ha-ha. Such a manbaby.
i0.wp.com/digbysblog.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/image-329.png
MattF
Lehrer on mathematics (a children’s song).
BSR
Oh damn! Been listening to his songs for about 50 years now, and have introduced his songs to many others. You will be missed, Tom!
Redshift
Truly a giant. So many great songs, it’s impossible to pick a favorite.
And of course his immortal quip that political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
SiubhanDuinne
He’s been one of my top favourites since I was in high school (and I graduated in 1960, which is a while back). I memorised every song on his first album, and I suspect I could sing them all, straight through and letter- /note-perfect to this day. A huge loss. RIP.
Kristine
“Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” is the one work of his I know well. Mark Russell used to sing it a lot.
Redshift
I also got to introduce my math major roommate in college to Lehrer’s “Lobachevsky.” He of course had to go look up the background – apparently there was a real plagiarism scandal, but nothing was ever proven, if I recall correctly.
Trivia Man
When you attend a funeral
it is sad to think that sooner or’l
-ater those you love will do the same for you
And you may have thought it tragic
Not to mention other adec-
-tives to think of all the weeping they will do
Trivia Man
My first Tom album was That Was the Year That Was so I came to his earlier works much later. Played that one on mega repeat (Vinyl!!!) and learned much new vocabulary. In particular SMUT taught me many new words.
I’ve never quibbled,if it was ribald
Trivia Man
@MattF:
New to me, thanks!
CaseyL
There are entire topics that I can’t think about without Lehrer’s songs playing in the background in my head.
National Brotherhood Week
Werner Von Braun
Pollution
We Will All Go Together When We Go
…and the forever dilemma of a sitting VP trying (and failing) to distinguish themselves from the President in order to get elected to the Presidency: “Whatever Became of Hubert.”
… and looking over his catalog, so many more that have taken up permanent place in my memory, ready to replay at the slightest provocation.
twbrandt
Once they go up
Who cares where they come down
That’s not my department
Says Werner Von Braun
J.
I grew up listening to Tom Lehrer, thanks to my mother and stepfather. (I think my stepfather may have known him through Harvard.) He was a genius, indeed. So many wonderful songs. Though two of my favorites are “The Masochism Tango” and “The Vatican Rag.”
trollhattan
@J.: Similar. Along with Nichols and May, and Bob Newhart LPs.
Like pages in a book, when really young we got the obvious jokes and relistening as we grew would understand more and more.
“Things were different” [leans back in recliner]
Phylllis
@Kristine: And at least once a year by a Tampa Bay TV icon, Dr. Paul Bearer. As with Bugs Bunny, the underpinnings of my classical and cultural learning.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
Also Shelley Berman, and Allan Sherman. And for a brief, shining moment, Vance Packard.
Seonachan
Grew up listening to his records. He shares my mother’s maiden name (no, I don’t use it as a password clue), so I always liked to think of him as an uncle. My father worked in Boston and used to play his songs at office parties. During one such party, someone mentioned he lived in Cambridge, so they looked him up in the phone book and cold called him. When my dad told him they were playing his songs at the party, he said “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.” They wound up having a nice long chat, trying but failing to connect his family to my mother’s, despite both being Brooklyn Jews.
Layer8Problem
We must never forget that the modern jello shot was invented by Tom Lehrer during his military service days working at the NSA in the 1950s. A true renaissance man.
Marc
My parents graduated from college in Cambridge/Boston in the early 50s and both worked as research assistants for a number of years afterwards, and still lived in Cambridge when I was a kid. So, they had most of Tom Lehrer’s records which they listened to rather frequently. Their favorite was Wernher von Braun, I suspect because their departments had been (and in my Dad’s case, still was) where they come down. Our kid was also cursed with two parents (spouse’s dad was a nuclear physicist) who thought listening to Tom Lehrer was an important educational experience in the ’00s.
prostratedragon
Would have loved to hear his “I Go to Scotland.” RIP.
kalakal
He made me laugh for nearly 50 years
Go well Prof Lehrer
“So be sweet and kind to mother now and then have a chat
Buy her candy or some flowers or a brand new hat
But maybe you had better let it go at that…”
Oedipus Rex
Tom Levenson
I had the good fortune to meet Lehrer a few times. He used to come back to Cambridge fairly often and the Venn diagram of our friends had a bit of overlap.
The problem? I was alway tongue tied when (re)-introduced to him (mostly at holiday parties). I didn’t what to just fan-boy him (how often could he be expected to smile about pigeons or dead hunters or von Braun or whatever). But I never could think what else to say! So I never had real conversation with him, despite several opportunities.
But it’s still a good thing to shake hands with one of your heroes/legends.
(BTW–he was always very nice; I think he was used to my reaction from lots of other encounters.)
One other detail. Years ago I was looking at the UC Santa Cruz website (where he taught for many years). The faculty pages had a place to list publications. The math department examples were usually all “Deformation Theory and Partition Lie Algebras” or “Primes of the form p^2 + nq^2″* and Lehrer’s were…
Tom Lehrer’s Song Book…
and…
wait for it…
Tom Lehrer’s Second Songbook.
It really has been a privilege to share the planet with Lehrer. So much wit and gleeful sardonicisim.
Much missed.
*Taken from a list of currently submitted titles to Acta Mathematica and not from the UCSC math dept. website, ‘coz I’m lazy.
Marc
We’d hear those as kids, along with Bill Cosby (of course). What we weren’t allowed to hear were the Redd Foxx, Mom’s Mabley, and Lenny Bruce records on the top shelf. I still have some of those somewhere.
Kristine
@Phylllis: OMG, I remember Dr Paul! I loved Creature Feature.
I do recall him performing that song during breaks from the movie. IIRC, he lip-synced to Russell’s recording, but I could be misremembering
ETA: the cultural aspects of Bugs Bunny. No lie told.
“Kill the wabbit. Kill The Wabbit! KILL THE WABBIT!
ETA 2: that clip of Daniel Radcliffe is gold
katie
@Trivia Man:
…But don’t you worry…
dr. luba
I was introduced to Lehrer in the 70s by my chemistry teacher. And later heard more of his music from a social studies teacher. Knew a lot of his songs even before buying his albums years later on CD.
My niece, who studied science in Ann Arbor in the 2010s, is also a fan of his work.
scav
Now this one seriously hurts. The family’s known his repertoire since forever. (National Brotherhood Week and of course Send the Marines have been the most common ones in my head recently.) But I’ll toss in Silent E and L-Y as lesser known worthies.
BlueGuitarist
@Pete Downunder:
Indeed.
Since Tom Lehrer preferred to give his age in Celsius, 36.
(Mozart was 35 in the traditional method.)
Layer8Problem
And I just found out that Princess Margaret was a fan. The wrong royal was crowned if you ask me.
frosty
RIP, a sad day indeed. A man with a brilliant ear for rhymes, a wicked sense of humor, and enough self-awareness to know he wanted to back away from it all. I’ll have to listen to some of his tunes (all in the public domain!) today.
BlueGuitarist
@Trivia Man:
“an inspiring achievement”
prostratedragon
“I Wanna Go Back to Dixie”
Trivia Man
@CaseyL: I frequently share the lyrics to Send The Marines
Miss Bianca
@J.: “The Masochism Tango” and “The Vatican Rag” also have special significance for me.
ETA: Back at UM when I was an undergrad, the men’s Glee Club would earn a little pocket cash around Valentine’s Day delivering singing Valentines. One of the guys I was seeing at the time was one of the participants. I promised him a little something extra if he would learn “The Masochism Tango” and sing it to one of my roommates, who was of a naturally gloomy disposition at any time of the year but particularly at Valentine’s (she was a descendant of Cotton Mather’s, maybe that had something to do with it).
It was definitely one of the more outre requests for that year, but he did it manfully (and my roommate thought it was hilarious.)
PhaedrusOnBass
You know that the end is near for a 97-year-old man, but this still stings. For me, he merged intelligence and satire in a tremendous way. I was college-age when he was at UC Santa Cruz, but I did not know that he was there. Even though I wasn’t a mathematician, I would have gone there just for the off chance I would run into him between classes.
My favorite bit from him was the song “Pollution,” which he would tailor to where he was playing. Since I was from SF, the end of one verse became, “The breakfast garbage that you throw into the Bay, they drink at lunch in San Jose.”
Simply a genius.
Ohio Mom
When Ohio Son took music appreciation in high school, his oral report/presentation was on Tom Lehrer. That was a moment I was proud of my parenting.
There wasn’t much overlap in the albums Ohio Dad and I brought into our marriage but we each had a copy of That Was The Week That Was.
I don’t know whether to be tickled or thrown into despair that so many of Lehrer’s songs remain pertinent — thinking here especially of Pollution and Who’s Next (listing all the nuclear nations).
Yes, the specific details may be different — I worry less nowadays about air pollution and more about microplastics, and Iran wasn’t on the list of nations pursuing nuclear arms in the 1960s — but overall, the songs remain too relevant.
MN Grubert
He had to die sometime, 97 is a good run.
I bought all his records in my 20’s and learned them all. I waited 45 min on hold to ask him a question on an MPR talk show in 1999. My favorite lyricist of all time, followed by Sullivan, Sondheim and Noel Coward.
Look up Lehrer doing Cowards “the end of the news”
narya
Two of my grad school profs were in Cambridge with him and helped label/package one of his albums, IIRC. RIP…
trollhattan
O/T The UEFA Euro trophy stays in England, congratulations Lionesses.
Rose Judson
@Tom Levenson: Now that’s a very nice anecdote. No shade to other mathematicians’ publications, but I’m sure more people learned more from Tom Lehrer’s Song Book.
Rose Judson
@trollhattan: Thank you for the update! I had to stop watching when it went to penalties, because of nerves.
Trivia Man
@Tom Levenson: I have the songbook, i like playing his works on the piano. 40 years on the book is somewhat tattered.
Trivia Man
@dr. luba: In my sisters chem class at BYU her prof offered instant A to anyone who could sing The Elements. After someone did it once he stopped offering that.
scav
@PhaedrusOnBass: Somehow the San Jose version was exactly the one taught to us in school! I’d almist firgotten that detail. It was a solidly loosy-goosy 3-room schoolhouse, and I swear our version of the “Rabbits had nothing to eat” song ended up with “The people are dying all over the place”.
Sister Golden Bear
@Redshift:
Always publish first!
trollhattan
@Rose Judson:
Really didn’t expect anybody to unseat mighty Spain but they had a really challenging tournament. My favorite stat has to be Across the three knockout matches, England have led for a total of four minutes.
That’s grit.
lowtechcyclist
I’ve told this story before in this space, but once again:
Probably a couple years before the pandemic, an online discussion caused me to look up von Braun’s Wikipedia page over lunch one day, and I noticed that he was buried in the same cemetery in Alexandria that my father is buried in. This seemed worth sharing, so when two of my podmates came back from lunch, I told them about this.
‘Who’s Wernher von Braun?” they said almost simultaneously.
So I explained, and mentioned that Tom Lehrer had parodied him in one of his songs.
“Who’s Tom Lehrer?”
:headslap:
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Also too, Mort Sahl and Vaughn Meader.
Warren Senders
The first concert I ever went to was The Master, at a private fundraiser for Eugene McCarthy in a suburban house in Massachusetts. It was 1967 and I was 8.
RIP Tom. Everything I know about timing comes from listening to your live recordings.
catclub
YES. Re-writing a folk song in all the other styles.
Cheryl from Maryland
The world is better for Professor Lehrer giving us his gifts of mathematics, song, and irony. My favorites are Alma and The Vatican Rag.
glc
@Kristine: I’ve been singing that in the garden lately, for no particular reason. (We have rabbits and deer but no pigeons.)
His worlds occasionally collided. He did a full calculus review in song form one term, to the astonishment of the students. The curtain opened after they were seated, revealing the piano.
tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/theres-a-delta-for-every-epsilon.pdf
He seemed to be setting his house in order. Sad to see him go, but he did get a good run.
PAM Dirac
I know he stopped writing new songs long ago, but this hurts. I don’t think anyone in history could put so much biting, clever, insightful satire into a 2-3 minute song.
trollhattan
@Cheryl from Maryland:
When I was a wee lad Alma was just a catchy ditty with lots of name dropping, some of which I recognized. Guessing it was funny to adults for a little kid to recite it utterly without context.
Much later I learned its historical veracity and very cheeky content.
zhena gogolia
@CaseyL: I quote Wernher Von Braun on a weekly basis at least.
zhena gogolia
@Marc: How about Rusty Warren?
Liminal Owl
I discovered Tom Lehrer in college, and will forever be surprised that my father hadn’t included all of Lehrer in his record collection. In grad school, I was invited to a reading group and knew I’d found kindred spirits when one person started singing “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” and all the rest joined in.
In case anyone here doesn’t know: Lehrer made all his songs Public Domain in 2020, and as of November 2022 the recordings could be streamed or downloaded at tomlehrersongs.com (With a warning that they might disappear at his death, so you might want to hurry if you plan to download.)
Scamp Dog
I want to mention one of his more recent tunes, Hanukkah in Santa Monica, which I think was written around 1997. Not political at all, but a lot of fun.
Elizabelle
Rest in power and wit, Tom Lehrer.
Have heard OF him, but not any of his music, performed, so that will be a treat in the coming days.
A friend and I googled him earlier this year, and were delighted to learn he was still with us, at that time.
Had so hoped he would outlive
TRUMP . I hope that we all do. And soon.eclare
Great photo, and it’s appropriate because the Lionesses played in the UEFA Euro final today!
eclare
@Rose Judson:
What a run!
trollhattan
Help us Mel Brooks, you’re our only hope.
Still kicking and making jokes at 99.
Gary K
@Redshift:
There was never a scandal. It is true that Gauss anticipated some of the work of Lobachevsky in hyperbolic geometry, but he kept the work secret so as to avoid what he called the “howling Boeotians” — those who would attack his work for daring to contradict Euclid. It’s also said that Gauss’s private writings on the subject are vague.
Dave Buchen
My dad his first two records, and I got the rest from the library. I’ve shared him with my kids and friends and also my students. I can positively say that the best class I have ever given is showing the students the -LY song. He was just amazing. Inspired me and made me laugh and will make me laugh. My favorites have to be Werner Von Braun which has such a brilliant delivery/rhyme scheme. And Oedipus Rex of course which is pure in its “mother-fucking comedy gold.”
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@kalakal: There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex,
You may have heard about his odd complex,
The reason he’s listed in Freud’s index,
Is cause he loved his mother!
Love his intro to this song, seriously discussing the need for a theme song, and then launching into the spritely musical intro.
Vatican Rag and National Brotherhood Week are other favorites, along with New Math (now, let’s not always see the same hands).
Rose Judson
I was just making this point in a group chat! I really want MB to make it to at least 105.
zhena gogolia
Good quotation in the NYT obituary:
Geoduck
Count me as another one owning a copy of Lehrer’s original LP, which my father purchased at some point. I also have The Remains of Tom Lehrer, an also out-of-print CD collection from 2000 or so. Gotta have that if you want the Vatican Rag in your collection.
glc
@zhena gogolia: That’s our actual plan (me and my wife, jointly).
Coming back to the songs: “We will all go together when we go” was more or less the anthem of my childhood.
youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs
It seemed very plausible at the time. And indeed there were some launch orders issued along the way, but not carried out.
lowtechcyclist
Lehrer succinctly summarized the U.S. – France relationship in “Who’s Next?”:
“France got the Bomb, but don’t you grieve, ’cause they’re on our side – I believe”
That line’s been apropos over and over again in the decades since.
Timill
@lowtechcyclist: Plus the intro to MLF Lullaby:
“the basic idea was that a bunch of us nations, the good guys, would get together on a joint nuclear deterrent force including our current friends, like France, and our traditional friends, like Germany.”
Another Scott
Just an amazing talent. RIP, Tom.
Meanwhile, shock shocking news that 47 cheats at golf.
Shocking!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@Cheryl from Maryland: At least 30 years back someone wrote a biography of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel that my Significant-Ex found in her local library before our first trip to Europe. The book concludes with Tom Lehrer’s lyrics to Alma.
And of course, once in Vienna we took time to make our way out to the cemetery in Grinzing where both Gustav and Alma are interred – a few steps, a few more lovers, and >50 years apart. Far away and so close. (In weiter Ferne, so nah! – the sequel to Wim Wenders’ renowned flick Wings of Desire)
Trivia Man
@Another Scott: and on the reddit the gold discussion group has banned that clip. Chumps.
Eyeroller
@Another Scott: Arnold Palmer was a Republican but it has been widely reported that he hated Trump because Trump cheats at golf (obvious to Arnie) and Arnie said that anybody who cheated at golf like that would cheat you in business.
Trivia Man
@Trivia Man: golf subreddit <headdesk>
Another Scott
@Trivia Man: Hey, they probably did ban it on the gold and crypto and … subredits, also too.
;-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Eyeroller:
Yeah, this seems pretty on-point to me.
I’ve never forgotten how one of my nephews was supposed to be this hot-shit golfer back in the day. ( I don’t golf myself, so I’ve never had the chance to witness him in action.) I’ve also never forgotten an incident where one of my brothers-in-law went out golfing with him one day and came back obviously less than impressed. My sister told me later that when she asked who’d won the game, he’d said my nephew had, and then simply added, “he cheats.”
I remember being surprised to hear this, but not shocked. And it’s been one of those things that’s made me look askance at my nephew and his accomplishments (which on paper, admittedly, look impressive) ever since.
Eyeroller
@BlueGuitarist: Part of Tom’s intro patter on one of the songs in “That was the Year that Was” was “It is a sobering thought to remember that when Mozart was my age, he’d been dead for two years.”
Apparently the song was “Alma,” mentioned by Cherly from Maryland (I didn’t recall though I have a CD of this album). It was about Alma Mahler-Werfel, who died late in 1964, widow of Gustav Mahler, married famous architect Walter Gropius, divorced him and married author Franz Werfel. One of the songs my late husband liked since he was a huge Mahler fan (while acknowledging Mahler’s personal shortcomings.).
Then I noticed from the obituary that Tom’s mother’s name was Alma.
RobinS
@Trivia Man: my parents got called to our elementary school because my younger brother. 2nd or 3rd grade, was singing Smut. 1966 or 67?
Lauryn11
Losing Lehrer hurts, even at 97. Maybe one day this country will stop dancing the Masochism Tango. Here’s a final verse for our Republican Congress:
Darling, if you smell something burning
The nation’s on a spit, it needs turning
Take your Sharpie out from its holder
And scrawl your initials in my shoulder
Remove my spine, I’ll say that you’re mine
As we dance to the Masochism Tango
Splitting Image
RIP. 97 is a good age. Many of his songs outlived him anyway.
TheQuietOne
The song that hit the hardest for someone who deserved it the most was “Wernher von Braun”.
Don’t say that he’s hypocritical
Say rather that he’s apolitical
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department!” says Wernher von Braun