Tom Lehrer, influential musical satirist of ’50s and ’60s, had died at age 97

23 comments

1. I honestly thought he died forever ago. Most of his videos are in black and white. Im a big fan of murdering pigeons in the park.

2. Did…did he come back?

3. There’s a YouTuber named “honest2Betsy” who has a bunch of videos featuring his music. I hadn’t known he was still alive.

   [For example](https://youtube.com/shorts/2azv8BRPhPo?si=_gMQqC1BkahMLs2w)

   [Another one because this is fun](https://youtube.com/shorts/chZGaWBtgS0?si=MPstBikeFCHCZCVl)

4. Daniel Radcliffe to star in his biopic?

5. Ah, I read it as Tomi Lahren and was pleasantly surprised for a moment

6. Damn.

   Still glad he outlived Kissinger.

7. Had no idea he was still alive but now the elements song will be stuck in my head for a week

8. Well, I’ll be poisoning pigeons in the park in his honor.

9. In 2012, rapper 2 Chainz requested permission to sample a song. Lehrer’s response, at 84 years old: “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?”

   Legend.

10. This is super sad. Condolences to his family and friends – this guy was a legend.

11. Plagiarize!

    Plagiarize!!

    Let no one else’s work evade your eyes!!!

12. “We Will All Go Together When We Go” is such a peppy song for so dark a subject as dying in nuclear hellfire. His music lives on forever

13. My dad was a huge fan, we used to listen to National Brotherhood Week together. Lehrer was a genius.

14. He wrote a bunch of songs for the Electric Company, including this one sung by rita moreno and morgan freeman. Was obsessed w this as a kid

    https://youtu.be/zKYHicLatKY?feature=shared

15. I literally just said I can’t believe he’s still alive lol

16. This makes me so sad. We were a Dr demento, weird Al, tom Lehrer family.

17. <<A Tribute to Tom Lehrer
    Before Steve Martin or Richard Pryor, before George Carlin, before Bob Newhart and yes even before Lenny Bruce, there was Tom Lehrer. Lehrer began releasing comedy albums all the way back in 1953, even before the concept of the comedy album had really been established. But Tom wasn’t your ordinary stand up comic – he was something so unique that quite frankly no one like him has ever appeared on the stage since.

    Tom Lehrer was a comedian, a musician, a mathematician and even possibly a spy (for us) – but beyond all of that he was a wit the likes of which only appears once in a generation. The closest analogue we can think of today might be Steve Colbert – although Steve’s songs don’t quite compare to Tom’s.>>

18. A legend who gave us some of the greatest comedy songs of all time. The only comparable musical comedian I can think of is Victor Borge, though the two had very different styles of comedy.

19. Like a lot of people I’d mistakenly thought he was long gone. A science teacher turned me on to some of his music in junior high and I listened to that tape a ton – it didn’t inform my tastes long term and I just never really encountered his music in the wild again. (where would that even happen?) Still, any time I looked into him later he seemed like he left a big legacy in a few fields, damn.

20. People would try to get into his classes at UCSC thinking it would be a comedy special. But it was always a super high level math class!

21. Such sad news. I’ll never forget him.

22. My dad got me hooked on Stan Freberg, who I loved. (“Yellow Road of Texas”, “Rock Island Line”, “John Marsha”, “That’s My Boy”).

    I then heard Tom Lehrer on the Dr Demento show in the late 70s & early 80.

    This is one song they played a lot.

    https://youtu.be/DtZR3lJobjw?si=WlRSZ4krxlJA51jQ

23. In his honor I will poison some pigeons in the park.

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