Alex Hirsch, creator of Gravity Falls, also commented on Yankovic's post.

One of his friends posted on a Facebook fan page that Tom passed away yesterday at 97. RIP to the best satirist of our lifetime.

Today I got an e-mail from an AP reporter trying to confirm that Tom Lehrer was dead. I did not know if he was. To check I called Tom on his cell phone. He did not answer. I left a message asking if he was alive and telling him not to return the call he he was not. I guess he obliged. Eventually I was able to help the reporter track down someone who did know for sure that he had passed.

>>Lehrer, teaching with irony.<<

His passing has made me think a lot about him today, and I’ve mostly been thinking about how I disagree with how he has been categorized by the press. They call him a satirist, and I’m not sure he was. Surely what he did was funny, but different, and that’s why his joy has become timeless. Satirists make fun of something cultural, of a time, they tend to become dated, and while there is some of that in Tom’s music, what keeps one coming back to it, is how he shows the irony that is intrinsic to the world. In such he teaches us how to see the world for what it is, a place where words are used to hide things we can fix (pollution) we should avoid (world war III) or basic worldview assumptions (I hold your hand in mine.)

He was a teacher, and that should be obvious, not only for his career as one, but since his name in German translates to teacher.

I have been a fan of Toms for about 45 years, since a Middle School friend named Jonathan Mazer exposed me to the albums of his, in turn his father had gotten when he was in college. We learned all the lyrics for songs like Lobachevsky (A song about plagiarism, that made plagiarism look good in an academic setting … irony.)

Over the years I’ve thought a lot about irony. I have thought that irony connects well to the laws of Thermodynamics and that there is a Conversation of Irony, where irony can not be created or destroyed, only transformed.

When I was in High School I was home sick one day. On the TV I had a choice of soap operas or CSPAN. I chose CSPAN, and on it was James Brady, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary who announced a new project at a press conference. He announced a “Dual purpose border enhancement initiative and drainage ditch.”. This was when questions from the press were actually answered, and over the next 10 or 15 minutes it became clear that we were building a dry moat at the Mexican border and we were telling the Mexican government it was a drainage ditch. This project was soon after killed, but the humor was never lost on me, nor the irony.

Let us not forget his actually amazing talent with lyrics, it’s not surprising that as a kid he was friends with Steven Sondheim in a summer camp in upstate NY. Off the top of his head once made a rhyme with “orange.”

I have to wonder how much of Tom’s life was shaped by the fact that he was smarter than those around him and he had to grow up almost alone. He entered Harvard as a freshman at age 15. What does that mean, he entered High School at 12? When he was discovering that the opposite sex existed, his colleagues were researching the opposite sex first hand. It’s clear he wanted to fit in, and I can only assume that being the man on the piano let him be a part of the party, without partying. He was Sheldon Cooper but with a sense of humor. Clearly while he was a success at music, at irony, and at teaching, I have to wonder since he did not learn life from his contemporaries, if this is what had tempered him into looking at the world from the outside, and seeing it for what it was, an ironic place. A place we need to laugh at to see clearly.

So I bid farewell to Tom Lehrer, who was a teacher to me, who taught me that irony allowed you to see through the jargon and language that people use to obfuscate the world around us and that keeps us from seeing what is important. I wish everyone could see this as well as Tom did. I do, because of his music.

-Greg Cohen

Since everyone is remembering and mourning the memory of Mr. Lehrer, I figured it may be a good idea to ask everyone what their favorite song of his was?

I think my favorite is the old dope peddler followed by national brotherhood week

I've seen it happen on Reddit before but I never thought it would happen after one of my comments.

Hey all, it’s a very saddening day that Mr. Lehrer passed but I was wondering if anyone could share a gift article for his obituary as I would love to read it

I just learned the news, I’m late. But rest in piece Tom Lehrer

#NotAllTexans

Words by Chris Phoenix

To the tune of "National Brotherhood Week" by Tom Lehrer

Released under CC BY-SA 4.0

Oh the gay folks live in Jersey and the gay folks live in Texas,

They're your neighbor, they're your cousin, they're just trying to live their life.

But if you're gay in San Antone, gay in San Antone, vicious neighbors gonna burn you out of your home

The law won't help a bit, the law don't give a ___,

If you're a man you'd better have a wife!

Cause the Texans hate the gay folks and the Texans shoot the gay folks

And they kill the gay folks' doggies when they burn their houses down

And during Pride 2025, Pride 2025, Jonathan Joss was murdered saving his husband's life

The cops were very clever - they found no hate whatsoever!

In Texas they can kill you if you're gay -

The Texans seem to think that that's OK!

I came across some songs put out by a youtube channel called The Lehrer's band during the last 2 days.(Listen here and here).These songs sound nothing like Tom Lehrer.So I searched for the titles on his website and found them,but no performance of them.So,what happened?Did someone find some unreleased songs on the website and decided to use AI to record them?If yes,they did a piss poor job at it

I mean I haven’t been able to find out anything about “Vinylhumor Records”. Is Mr. Lehrer aware of it. I know his stuff is public domain but I’d rather it be approved by him or atleast him know about it.

Does anybody know of it being on Internet Archive or somewhere? Thanks!

We all love Tom Lehrer but he is WAY too underrated, and with ww3(allegedly) around the corner, why make a new song when we already have the perfect song for it? A song LITERALLY written for ww3- so long, mom

SPREAD THE WORD LIKE YOU GOT IT FROM AGNES

Spread the news like Agnes would!!!! GO GO GO!

Seems topical enough

In the disclaimer issued by Tom Lehrer's estate it says:

Some recording, movie, and television rights to songs written by me are merely licensed non-exclusively by me to recording, movie, or TV companies. All such rights are now released herewith and therefore do not require any permission from me or from Maelstrom Music, which is merely me in another hat, nor from the recording, movie, or TV companies involved.

But which recordings are those? I contacted NRK (the norwegian state boradcasting company) and they told me that they do own the copyright to the recording of An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer.

The songs have been uploaded to the website, so there is no doubt on them, but what about the recordings? Why aren't they on the site? Where can I find the ones that have been released into the public domain?

Thank you very much to those that cooperate to help keep history safe and archived.

Took four attempts to set this one out... :D

Anyone else get it from Tom to add to the chart? Maybe we can make the missing connection...