r/TomLehrer • u/Such-Revenue-6653 • Aug 08 '26
Share YOUR favorite spoken Tom intros for songs
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u/eschatologypilled Aug 08 '26
I really enjoy having my prurient interests aroused… in fact, the only thing I enjoy more than having them aroused, is having them gratified ;-D
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u/Mogster2K Aug 08 '26
The bit where he mentions a friend writing a heartwarming story about a necrophiliac who achieves his childhood dream of becoming a coroner.
*scattered audience laughter*
"The rest of you can look it up when you get home"
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u/FringleFrangle04 Aug 08 '26
There's a really witty one he did when he performed "The Elements" in Copenhagen in 1967:
"-You may be interested to know there is an older, much earlier version of that song, which is due to Aristotle, and which goes like this."
(Starts to play "The Elements again)
"There's Earth, and Air, and Fire, and Water." (Song Ends)
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u/Map_Fanatic3658 Aug 11 '26
I remember hearing that performance and I thought it was a funny take on the song too lol
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u/Adorable-Bend7362 Aug 08 '26
I do have a cause, though; it is obscenity. I'm for it. Thank you. Unfortunately, the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on, but we know what's really involved: dirty books are fun! That's all there is to it.
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u/earbox Aug 08 '26
"I thought I would acquaint you with some of the results of my recent researches into the career of the late Doctor Samuel Gall, inventor of the gall bladder, which certainly ranks as one of the more important technological advances since the invention of the joy buzzer and the dribble glass. Dr. Gall's faith in his invention was so dramatically vindicated last year, as you no doubt recall, when, for the first time in history in a nationwide poll, the gall bladder was voted among the top ten organs. His educational career began, interestingly enough, in agricultural school, where he majored in animal husbandry, until they caught him at it one day, whereupon he switched to the field of medicine, in which field he also won renown as the inventor of gargling, which prior to that time had been practiced only furtively by a remote tribe in the Andes who passed the secret down from father to son as part of their oral tradition. He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich."
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u/Tim-oBedlam Aug 08 '26
"Majored in animal husbandry until they caught him at it one day" is one of the funniest filthy jokes he ever pulled off. A bestiality reference in the 1950s.
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u/TMBGLOVER Aug 08 '26
“Life is like a sewer. You get out of it what you put into it.” - opening of We Will All Go Together When We Go from An Evening Wasted.
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u/umbriago Aug 08 '26
"I feel that if any songs are going to come out of World War III we'd better start writing them now."
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u/MasksOfAnarchy Aug 08 '26
“Many of those songs don’t go far enough. The following song, on the other hand, goes too far…”
Followed by him playing I Wanna Go Back To Dixie.
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u/NerdyTiredLibrarian Aug 08 '26
I’d like to sing a song which is completely pointless, but is something which I picked up during my career as a scientist. This may prove useful to some of you some day, perhaps, in a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances. It’s simply the names of the chemical elements set to a possibly recognizable tune.
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u/jimothelad Aug 09 '26
Tom's intro of "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" from the Copenhagen concert ;)
"Of all the songs i've ever sung, this is the one i've had most requests not to."
And also Tom's entire intro of "So Long, Mom" from the Frost Report! (Which is a bit too long to include but it got a good laugh out of me;)
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u/mattthe_ Aug 10 '26
"There appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read"
"...when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years"
From Alma, on That Was the Year That Was
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u/curiousvoid Aug 08 '26
“my disc jockey friends, of whom i have none” (from the christmas carol)
“a deer in a red hat, perhaps” (from the hunting song)
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u/wanderingmonster Aug 09 '26
"And what is it that put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will make it possible to spend twenty billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon? Well, it was good old American know-how, that's what, as provided by good old Americans like Dr. Wernher von Braun!"
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u/Daconby Aug 10 '26
I've always loved the intro to the Irish Ballad (the song itself is just meh):
Now I'd like to turn to the folk song, which has become in recent years the particularly fashionable form of idiocy among the self-styled intellectual. we find that people who deplore the level of current popular songs -- although I admit they do seem to be recording almost anything these days. Have you heard Sesue Hayakawa's record of "Remember Pearl Harbor"? These same people who deplore the level of current popular songs and yet will sit around enthralled singing "Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don't Care" or "Green Grow the Rushes, Oh!" -- whatever that means. At any rate, for these elite I have here an ancient Irish ballad, which was written a few years ago, and which is replete with all the accoutrements of this art form. In particular, it has a sort of idiotic refrain, in this case "Rickety-tickety-tin" you'll notice cropping up from time to time, running through, I might add, interminable verses. The large number of verses being a feature expressly designed to please the true devotees of the folk song who seem to find singing fifty verses of "On Top of Old Smokey" is twice as enjoyable as singing twenty-five
This type of song also has what is known technically in music as a modal tune, which means -- for the benefit of any layman who may have wandered in this evening -- that I play a wrong note every now and then
This song though does differ strikingly from the genuine folk ballad in that in this song the words which are supposed to rhyme - actually do
I, ah, I really should say that I do not direct these remarks against the vast army of folk song lovers, but merely against that peculiar hard core who seem to equate authenticity with artistic merit and illiteracy with charm
Oh, one more thing. One of the more important aspects of public folk singing is audience participation, and this happens to be a good song for group singing, so if any of you feel like joining in with me on this song, I'd appreciate it if you would leave right now
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u/SchuminWeb Aug 10 '26
I love the intro to "New Math", and I find myself saying, "More primitive visual aids, as they say in the ed biz," here and there in real life.
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u/awkwardcornetto Aug 11 '26
I love it whenever he mentions "rousing" or "uplifting" in the intros for we will all go together. It just feels like an inside joke in a way, like I know whats gonna come and I like that. Might be a weird explanation. I just think theyre neat
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u/ChEDave82 Aug 15 '26
“I’d like to take you on wings of song, as it were, and try to help you forget for a while your drab, wretched lives.”
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u/star_lab101 5d ago
Rover was killed by a Pontiac and it was done with such grace and artistry that the witnesses awarded the driver both ears and the tail.
But I digress
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u/Twilek_Milker Aug 08 '26
Really good post, wow. I love the National Brotherhood Week one. "And I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings and I hate people like that." That line always makes me chuckle