History Music / TomLehrer

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Shockingly, the subject of "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" wasn't something Tom came up with. During the 50's, [[https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=icwdmprobe using strychnine-laced corn to kill pigeons was a US government-backed act of pigeon population control.]]

* PainfulRhyme: Sometimes spectacularly so, and [[InvokedTrope entirely deliberate]]. There are some truly rough ones in "(I'm Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica":
-->Those Eastern winters, I can't endure 'em\\

-->Rosh Hashanah, I spend in Ari-''zah''-na\\

* FilkSong: Virtually everything he wrote has been adopted as "Found Filk," notwithstanding--or perhaps in spite of--Lehrer's feelings about folk music. There have even been full Tom Lehrer Sing-Alongs.

* KnowsAGuyWhoKnowsAGuy: "I Got It from Agnes" in the sense of carnal knowledge.

* LeastRhymableWord: Multiple examples. Lehrer loves working around this.

** One album was named ''An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer''; another's cover quoted several unflattering reviews of his work, including one from the ''New York Times'' saying "Mr. Lehrer's muse is [[TheUnfettered not fettered]] by such inhibiting factors as taste."
** [[InsultBackfire He really liked that, and used to quote it often]].

[[caption-width-right:350:"Come back tomorrow night, we're gonna do...fractions."]]

* '''BlackComedy''': Lots and ''lots'' of examples, but "I Got It from Agnes" has this doozy: "Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/ [[ParentalIncest She got it from her daddy]], [[DaddysGirl who just gives her everything]]..."
** It [[SerialEscalation gets better]]: "She gave it to Daniel whose [[BestialityIsDepraved spaniel]] has it now / Our dentist's even got it and we're '''''[[InstantSedation still]] [[BlackComedyRape wondering]] [[DudeShesLikeInAComa how]].'''''"

* CoolOldGuy: He's ''ninety'' years old and retired but he's clearly StillGotIt and was delighted to have Music/TwoChainz sample his song ''The Dope Peddler'' for his debut album (in Lehrer's words) "[[DeadpanSnarker literally sixty years after I recorded it.]]" He described his official response to the copyright request:

* ViewersAreGeniuses: The historical stuff nowadays, thanks to the topical aspect (see TheGreatPoliticsMessUp, ParentalBonus). His scientific songs, though, definitely qualify; in fact, before Lehrer even recorded an album, he performed the "[[http://www.haverford.edu/physics/songs/lehrer/physrev.htm Physical Revue]]" to a group of Harvard physics students.

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: A lot of the GallowsHumor in his songs is predicated on the fact that nuclear war with the USSR and the subsequent TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt was considered inevitable at the time.

-->''You may end up just like Oedipus,\\
I'd rather marry a duck-billed platypus,\\
Than end up just like Oedipus Rex!''

** If you've only heard one song of Lehrer's, it's probably "Silent E" from ''Series/TheElectricCompany1971''. Or "L-Y" from the same show.
** Or maybe your Chemistry teacher introduced you to "The Elements".

* InTheStyleOf: He performed "My Darling Clementine" in the styles of Music/GilbertAndSullivan, Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart, Music/ColePorter and rock n' roll.

Thomas Andrew Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American satirist who managed to achieve remarkable popularity and impact on popular culture, despite having produced only three albums' worth of material in the [[TheFifties 1950s]] and [[TheSixties '60s]] before retiring to a life in academia as a mathematician. Lehrer's pieces often take the form of witty parodies of various popular song forms. Other common themes in his work are disapproval of [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking nuclear war, Cold War politics, and folk singing]]. Of course, he undercuts that last by putting forth as perfect a rendition of such songs as can be done with only a piano ("imagine that I am playing an 88-string guitar", as he said in his intro to "The Folk Song Army," on his 1965 album ''That Was the Year That Was'') as accompaniment.

->''"I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene--or, as they say in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity New York]], [[TakeThat sophisticated]]."''
-->-- '''Tom Lehrer''', ''Music/TomLehrerRevisited''

!!Albums with their own trope pages:

* ''Music/SongsByTomLehrer'' (and ''Tom Lehrer Revisited'')
* ''Music/AnEveningWastedWithTomLehrer'' (and ''More of Tom Lehrer'')
* ''Music/ThatWasTheYearThatWas''

In the fall of 2020, at the age of 92, he announced that he was releasing all of his lyrics to the public domain, and set up [[https://tomlehrersongs.com/ his own website]] for downloading them, which will remain online until 2024.

* GallowsHumor: His nuclear war songs. A non-nuclear example is in his 1965 version of "''National Brotherhood Week''", which debuted during the titular week itself, which was %% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

* GallowsHumor: His nuclear war songs. A non-nuclear example is in his 1965 version of "''National Brotherhood Week''", which debuted during the titular week itself, which was infamous for being the same week in which civil rights activist Malcom X was murdered. Lehrer references X's murder as "an idea of how effective the whole thing is."
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:
** "I Got It from Agnes". What "it" is is never specified, but we can guess.
--->I love my friends, and they love me\\
We're just as close as we can be\\
And just because we really care\\
Whatever we get, we share.
** Sadly, Lehrer did ''not'' originally get this past the radar, as his recording of it was not released until 1997 as a bonus track on ''Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer'', a compilation rerelease of two albums from the 1950s. The first released recording of it was from the ''Tom Foolery'' soundtrack in 1980. However, as it turns out, ''Lehrer himself'' was responsible for the song being unreleased at the time, as he felt it was too racy. He was known to perform it in nightclubs going back to the ''1950s'', though.

* RousingLullaby: ''The [[labelnotenote:MLF]]Multi-Lateral Force[[/labelnote]] Lullaby,'' which is about giving Germany access to the Nuclear Button scant years after they lost UsefulNotes/WorldWar2 and may still hold a grudge.

* GallowsHumor: His nuclear war songs. A non-nuclear example is in his 1965 version of "''National Brotherhood Week''", which debuted during the titular week itself, which was infamous for being the same week in which civil rights activist UsefulNotes/MalcomX was murdered. Lehrer references X's murder as "an idea of how effective the whole thing is."

* GallowsHumor: His nuclear war songs. A non-nuclear example is in his 1965 version of "''National Brotherhood Week''", which debuted during the titular week itself, which was infamous for being the same week in which civil rights activist UsefulNotes/Malcom X was murdered. Lehrer references X's murder as "an idea of how effective the whole thing is."

* GallowsHumor: His nuclear war songs.

* ImmediateSelfContradiction: Famously in his 1965 version of "National Brotherhood Week", which he sung during the titular week itself and was infamous for being the same week in which civil rights activist UsefulNotes/Malcom X was murdered. Lehrer references X's murder as an "idea of how effective the whole thing is."

He also wrote 10 songs for the children's educational series ''Series/TheElectricCompany1971''.

--->"More desperate than amusing" — New York Herald Tribune\\

** If you've only heard one song of Lehrer's, it's probably "Silent E" from ''Series/TheElectricCompany1971''. Beware: '''EarWorm.''' Or "L-Y" from the same show.