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Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Why today's toothless comedians can't compare to Tom Lehrer
If you've ever laughed at a satirical song, whether watching a panel show, a live comedy gig or on Radio 4, there's a good chance that it would not have existed without Tom Lehrer, the brilliant mathematician and musician who has died at the age of 97. Lehrer did not write many songs, but his influence on comic music is almost without parallel; he went further and harder than anyone else ever had before, and the results were jaw-dropping in both their wit and (apparent) tastelessness. Yet what makes his death all the sadder is that, without him, satirical music has lost its godfather, and those who claim to follow in his footsteps are toothless and sedate by comparison. Nobody would dream of tackling the hot-button issues that Lehrer dealt with head-on, and the tentative, unimaginative efforts of even today's best comedians seem cowardly in comparison with what the grand vizier of satire came up with. Lehrer was at least celebrated in his own time by the cognoscenti. Sometimes, this was not entirely shared by the wider world; the New York Times sniffed that 'Mr Lehrer is not fettered by such inhibiting features as taste'. The subject of its disdain was, of course, delighted by such criticism, because the whole point of satire is that it should not be tasteful or polite. Instead, at its most devastating, it should be rude, crude and raucous. The fact that Lehrer performed his songs over nicely judged piano arrangements does not detract one inch from the sentiments contained within them. In this, he was the natural heir to a tradition that had begun centuries before. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was quite normal for ballads to be sold on the street for a penny or so, to be sung over a simple tune. Often the point of these ballads was to poke fun at politicians or royalty or at some risible custom or tradition of the day. These stabs at satire were not always appreciated by those who they were aimed at, and their creators could be whipped or placed in the stocks for their transgression: in extremis, satirists could have their noses cut off. Musical satire ventured into the mainstream in the 19th century, finding perhaps its greatest expression through the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. (Lehrer would later appropriate the duo's most vitriolic work, The Major General's Song, for his scientific satire The Elements.) Many early 20th century music hall performers were unsparing in their criticism of British wartime ineptitude and waste – some of the songs can be found in the revue Oh! What A Lovely War – but after WWII, public appetite for satire on the horrors of war appeared to be at an all time low on both sides of the Atlantic. Instead, gentler parody was in vogue, such as the pianist Victor Borge's mild, inoffensive Happy Birthday in the style of Rachmaninov. By the time that Lehrer emerged in the mid Fifties, there was a pent-up desire for a different and more challenging kind of comedy. Such songs of his as Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and The Masochism Tango represented an edgier black humour that played extremely well with his university-educated, literate audiences, who delighted in the sense of boundaries being transgressed and good taste being left at the door. Lehrer was working on two separate levels. The first was straightforward humorous parody, such as his Harvard football song Fight Fiercely Harvard and The Elements, in which he listed the periodic table to the tune of the Major General's Song (which, of course, represented a tip of the hat to his musical comedy predecessors.) The second, however, was more pointed and overtly satirical. When he wrote We Will All Go Together When We Go in 1959, it might have been seen as a commentary on the American way of death. However, with the impending sceptre of nuclear war, it soon became clear that such lyrics as 'we will all fry together when we fry/we'll be French fried potatoes by and by' were not simply wry observation but instead commentary on the rapidly accelerating atomic age. Lehrer was especially popular in Britain by this time. It is not hard to see him as a transatlantic cousin of such satirical acts as Beyond the Fringe, the musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann and the members of That Was The Week That Was, which occasionally used similarly Lehrer-esque songs in their shows to illustrate some topical point. Yet even here, the Cook-Moore-Miller-Bennett quartet preferred to veer into silliness rather than the cutting and focused anger of Lehrer. When he wrote National Brotherhood Week, a satire on race relations, and prefaced its live performance by saying 'this year, for example, on the first day of the week, Malcolm X was killed, which gives you an idea of how effective the whole thing is', the gasps of shock from the audience are barely concealed by the giddy laughter. It is simply impossible to imagine that someone would have made a similar joke today about, say, George Floyd without being cancelled. And this, unfortunately, proved to be the issue with Lehrer. Underneath his Harvard professor exterior, all big smiles and thick glasses, his most famous songs tore into contemporary society with a rare degree of wit and viciousness that set an impossibly high bar for any musical comedian to follow him. In many regards, he was the punk rocker of his day, tearing polite and acceptable convention to pieces in outrageous yet hilarious fashion. Even today, his work is still bracing, and deeply funny. Yet by the mid Sixties, Lehrer had retired from creating music and instead focused on his academic work. He remarked, in a quip that defined the rest of his career, that 'Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize'. It's a great tragedy that Lehrer proved himself a brilliant one-off rather than the father of a new strain of musical satire. Monty Python, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band and America's Weird Al Yankovic had their moments, but their humour was parodic and broad, as opposed to the refined scalpel that Lehrer liked to use, and they lacked the devastating anger of their predecessor. The songs would make you laugh, but they would seldom make you think too hard afterwards. (In the late Eighties, the British duo Kit and the Widow came close with the anti-Section 28 ditty Burn the F----ts.) Today, the fine art of the satirical song seems almost to have died out with Lehrer. Tim Minchin and Randy Newman are fine, but we look in vain for the great satirical song that will take on British or American politicians, the trans movement, wokery or the Israel-Palestine conflict. (For my money, Blame Canada from the South Park film is the only satirical song of the last few decades that really comes close to Lehrer's heyday, mixing a brilliant tune with lyrics that make you sit up and gasp with their daring and vitriol.) Perhaps this is inevitable. Lehrer himself remarked in the early 2000s that 'I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted'. Tom Lehrer's five funniest songs 1. Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (1959) One of Lehrer's best-known and best-loved songs, this one focuses on the idea of a romantic Sunday morning seeing the narrator and his sweetheart laying waste to the local pigeons. The lyrics are some of Lehrer's finest – 'We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment/Except for the few we take home to experiment' – and the joyously macabre sentiments make this a perennial favourite. 2. I Hold Your Hand In Mine (1953) If you can imagine what a Roald Dahl short story would sound like if it was turned into an elegant parody of a torch song, I Hold Your Hand In Mine is pretty much it. As Lehrer's besotted narrator segues from swooning romantic to obsessed murderer, the laughs keep coming, even as he complains: 'For now each time I kiss it, I get bloodstains on my tie.' 3. National Brotherhood Week (1965) Even by the often uncompromising standards of Lehrer, this song – which rivals Mel Brooks' Springtime for Hitler for jaw-dropping tastelessness – is strong stuff in its denigration of racial tensions, which the singer calls 'as American as apple pie'. As he declares 'Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/And the Catholics hate the Protestants/And the Hindus hate the Muslims/And everybody hates the Jews' the listener is briefly transported into another, edgier world, in which satire of this kind was ever considered not just possible, but hilarious. 4. Send The Marines (1965) That Lehrer stopped writing and performing songs before the Nixon era began is always to be regretted, but it is likely that his reaction to that (and to many other political issues) might be encompassed by his attack on mindless imperialism. It is beautifully and simply expressed in lyrics such as 'They've got to be protected/All their rights respected/Til someone we like can be elected'. Like so many of Lehrer's songs, there are countless conflicts that it could apply to, and it seems every bit as prescient as it did 60 years ago. 5. We Will All Go Together When We Go (1959) It is not yet known what form Lehrer's funeral will take, but it would not seem inappropriate for this particular song to be played at it. Initially it appears to be a dark satire on the American way of death, poking fun at how we are all reduced to the same insignificance after we die. But when Lehrer sings 'For if the bomb that drops on you/Gets your friends and neighbours too/There'll be nobody left behind to grieve', the well-observed balance throughout his work between horror and hilarity finds perhaps its simplest, and nastiest, expression.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tom Lehrer, musical satirist, dies at 97
Tom Lehrer, an acerbic songwriter and Harvard-trained mathematician who rose to fame in the 1950s and '60s by pillorying the sensibilities of the day, has died at age 97. Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Mass., on Saturday. His death was confirmed by friends on Facebook. No cause of death was given. The bespectacled Lehrer began performing on college campuses and clubs across the country in the 1950s, playing the piano and singing darkly comedic numbers that he penned on topics such as racial conflict, the Catholic Church and militarism, earning him the sobriquet of "musical nerd god." In "National Brotherhood Week," which lampooned the brief interlude of imposed tolerance celebrated annually from the 1930s through the early 2000s he wrote: Oh, the white folks hate the black folksand the black folks hate the white folks,to hate all but the right folks is an old established rule …But during National Brotherhood Week (National Brotherhood Week),Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to fun to eulogizeThe people you despise,As long as you don't let 'em into your school. Lehrer's songs also took aim at then-taboo subjects such as sexuality, pornography and addiction. In 1953, his self-released album 'Songs of Tom Lehrer" became an underground hit. Produced for $40 and promoted by word of mouth, the cover image was of Lehrer in hell playing piano as the devil. It eventually sold an estimated 500,000 copies and sparked demand for concert performances around the world. During the mid-1960s, Lehrer contributed several songs to the satirical NBC news show 'That Was the Week That Was,' hosted by David Frost. The show inspired Lehrer's third album, 'That Was the Year That Was.' Released in 1965, it reached the 18th spot on American music charts. On the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2018, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote that Lehrer's lyrics were written "with the facility of William S. Gilbert and tunes that evoked the felicity of Sir Arthur Sullivan. Lehrer's work bounced the absurdities and paranoias of that period back at us, in rhymed couplets and a bouncy piano beat." Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born in New York City on April 9, 1928, to a middle-class family. His father James Lehrer was a successful necktie manufacturer. As a child he took piano lessons but preferred Broadway show tunes — with a particular affection for the works of Gilbert and Sullivan — to the classics. After entering Harvard University at age 15, his penchant for sardonic humor surfaced in his parody song "Fight Fiercely Harvard," which challenged the football team's reputation for toughness and earned him a measure of renown on campus. For a time he followed a dual track, music and academia, though he never completed the PhD thesis he began while pursuing doctoral studies at Harvard and Columbia University. After a two-year break between 1955 and 1957 when he served in the Army, Lehrer once again performed concerts across the U.S., Canada and Europe. In a 1959 Time article, the magazine described Lehrer and fellow comedians Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl as the symbols of a new 'sick' comedy. 'What the sickniks dispense is partly social criticism liberally laced with cyanide, partly a Charles Addams kind of jolly ghoulishness, and partly a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world." Lehrer's work opened the door for generations of musical satirists including Randy Newman and 'Weird Al' Yankovic and exerted an influence on everything from the musical skits of "Saturday Night Live" to the mockumentary "This Is Spinal Tap." "He set the bar for me — and provided an example of how a nerdy kid with a weird sense of humor could find his way in the world,' Yankovic once said of Lehrer. 'Done right, social criticism set to a catchy tune always makes politics easier to digest,' Lizz Winstead, co-creator of "The Daily Show," told Buzzfeed in an article examining Lehrer's influence on modern satirical comedy. But Lehrer was first and foremost an academic, over the course of his career teaching math and musical theater at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and UC Santa Cruz and working for a time at the Atomic Energy Commission. He viewed entertainment largely as a sideline, and by the late 1960s had grown weary of life in the public eye. After several pauses to focus on his academic pursuits, he stepped off the stage in 1967 following a concert in Copenhagen. In 1971, he wrote songs for the PBS children's series "The Electric Company." His last turn in the spotlight was a year later. After performing at a presidential campaign rally for the Democratic nominee, South Dakota Sen. George S. McGovern, he gave up performing for good. Lehrer explained his retreat from the stage by saying that 'political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." In an interview with the New York Times, he elaborated: 'The Vietnam War is what changed it. Everybody got earnest. My purpose was to make people laugh and not applaud. If the audience applauds, they're just showing they agree with me.' But audiences were not through with Lehrer. After nearly a decade in self-imposed exile, Lehrer became a hit once again in the early 1980s when Cameron Mackintosh, the British theatrical producer, created "Tomfoolery," a revue of Lehrer's songs that opened in London's West End before going to to play New York, Washington, Dublin and other cities. Despite the public acclaim, Lehrer maintained a fiercely private life. He never married nor did he have children. In 2020, Lehrer announced through his website that he was making all of the lyrics he wrote available to download for free without further permission, whether or not they were published or retained a copyright. Two years later he went further in relinquishing his rights, saying: 'In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves, and don't send me any money.' Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. 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Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
Tom Lehrer, Harvard's Satiric, Melodic Mathematician, Dies at 97
Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-educated mathematician whose brief side gig as one of America's favorite satirical composers captured in tune some of the anxieties and absurdities of the 1950s and 1960s, has died, according to the New York Times. He was 97. Lehrer died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Times said, citing a friend of Lehrer's, David Herder.
New York Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97
Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly iconoclastic songs made him a favorite satirist in the 1950s and '60s on college campuses and in all the Greenwich Villages of the country, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97. His death was confirmed by David Herder, a friend. 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.' Mr. Lehrer's songwriting output was modest, but it was darkly memorable. In the tasteless world he evoked, a seemingly harmless geezer turned out to be 'The Old Dope Peddler' and spring was the time for 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Daily Mail
20-07-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
How many colours in a rainbow? More than 100: Think Like A Mathematician by Junaid Mubeen
Think Like A Mathematician by Junaid Mubeen (Profile Books £18.99, 352pp) Doing jigsaws with Junaid Mubeen doesn't sound like much fun. Mubeen insists on sorting the pieces according to three characteristics: colour, number of tabs (pointy bits) and size. He uses three trays – one for each size – and creates grids on them, with each row representing a colour and each column a number. His brother-in-law, with whom he does jigsaws, prefers to just fish pieces out of a messy jumble. Mubeen is a mathematician. He believes that understanding mathematical concepts will help us think more clearly about everyday issues. And he's not just talking about 'applied' maths that helps us construct bridges or check our bank statements. He means 'pure' maths, which is more abstract and usually has no obvious utility. 'Pure mathematicians often take pride in the apparent uselessness of their work, even deriding the supposed need for their subject to bring practical benefits,' Mubeen writes. ''Here's to pure mathematics', starts one toast, 'may it never be of use to anyone.'' Across ten chapters he covers topics such as 'dimensionality', 'sets', 'axioms' and 'fractals'. He's good at leading readers through unfamiliar concepts and most of it is pretty interesting stuff. For example, everyone knows that the rainbow has seven colours, right? At school, we all learned 'Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet'. But that number is arbitrary. In his chapter on 'the continuum', Mubeen points out that: 'Those colours represent specific wavelengths (in increasing order) but we could just as well reference ten colours, or a hundred, or indeed any number between the two extremes of red and violet. Isaac Newton, whose experiments led to the discovery of the visible light spectrum, attached mystical significance to the number seven, which is probably why he settled on that many markers.' This leads into a discussion about numbers that can't be accurately expressed as fractions – irrational numbers, such as pi – and then to a description of 'calculus' and, for the first time, I, a non-mathematician, felt as though I understood what the latter is. But his efforts to show how this knowledge can map on to everyday issues are less successful. The jigsaw story comes in the chapter on 'dimensionality', in which he attempts to relate the mathematical concept of spaces with many more dimensions than three to the notion that there are lots of different types of intelligence. An understanding of multi-dimensional spaces doesn't add much to the idea that intelligence is a complex attribute. Elsewhere he writes that just as the limitations of our senses mean our perception of the world is a distortion of the reality, so the sort of mathematical concepts with which we are most familiar do not truly reflect the subject. Then he compares that with the way we provide only a selective view of our lives on social media. The analogy is reasonable but we don't need an understanding of complex mathematical ideas to get the measure of Instagram. I think I might be with those who celebrate pure mathematics for its lack of applications.
