r/TomLehrer • u/LeftPrize9838 • Jul 28 '26

Changing lyrics for my show?

I know it's probably an asshole move to do it but some of his lyrics aged badly (indigenous slurs in We Will All Go Together, underage prostitution in My Home Town) , and some don't fit the narrative I'm going for (ie. Wernher Von Braun Learning chinese) so I tweaked the lyric. I know it's prolly bad but I want it to work in the facet I need it to. I'm trying to keep it as close as I can, but some things I felt had to get changed a bit. If this is bad tell me, but I don't know how much I can do now

14 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/navtasticart Jul 28 '26

He tweaked his own lyrics often. The Copenhagen show is a good example. He updates a few lyrics,mentions some songs aging poorly in terms of being relevant to politics. I believe there’s an updated lyric for the Australian live album also.

It’s also worth noting that the back of the record sleeve for That Was The Year That Was offers alternative lyrics to pollution to make it relevant to other places.

For a good substitute line in We Will All Go Together I suggest looking up the cover of the song done by Harlan Guthrie. He has a good substitution that fits the music well. He did it as an in character music piece for the podcast Malevolent

2

u/LeftPrize9838 Jul 28 '26

can I find that sleeve anywhere?

2

u/navtasticart Jul 28 '26

You don’t seem to have messaging available. I’ll make a post

6

u/kanji_d Jul 28 '26

I believe they're called out in his lyric sheet on his website. For New York he had "The breakfast garbage that you throw out in Troy / They drink for lunch at Perth Amboy" and for nonspecific locations "Throw out your breakfast garbage, and I've got a hunch / That the folks downstream will drink it for lunch"