Influential early satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer dead at 97

Granted, that's parody as opposed to satire, a listing of the known element on the periodic table at the time set to a song from "Pirates of Penzance." But "Weird Al" Yankovic has dedicated multiple songs to just taking hit tunes and rearranging them into polkas. Also, and unsurprisingly, apparently Weird Al also used to do a cover of "The Elements Song."

Lehrer was found dead in his Cambridge, Massachusetts home on Saturday, aged 97. He was a cult figure more than a smash success, a public figure who spent much of his life out of the public eye in any real way. It's not that he was reclusive. It's just that he was too busy with his other gig, being a professor of mathematics, something he did at MIT before holding that job at UC Santa Cruz for three decades. They even let him teach a little musical theater there for good measure. He once joked to a live audience, "I don’t like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn’t as though I had to do this. I could be making, oh, $3,000 a year just teaching."

In 1953, Lehrer self-produced "Songs of Tom Lehrer," which was successful enough that in 1959 he released his second "studio" album "More of Tom Lehrer" alongside the live album "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer." He was an underground cult favorite, and put youself back in the landscape of the 1950s, media and otherwise, to realize how notable, and how impressive, that is.

Lehrer was consciously able to weaponize his demeanor for comedic purposes. He was a wit, but he was also like a Bizarro Bob Newhart, erudite, loquacious, and dark. Lehrer wrote songs about drugs and homosexuality and the Catholic Church, the kind of stuff that led one to be an underground satirist in the 1950s and 1960s, even when you were a mathematics-infused intellectual in your other life. Although, his 1965 live album "That Was the Year That Was" did reach number 18 on the Billboard charts. Not too shabby for an album with multiple songs about nuclear proliferation.

Lehrer influenced Weird Al and Randy Newman and, oddly, apparently the guys from Steely Dan. Remarkably, and a testament to his character and his seeming apathy to his musical career, in 2020 Lehrer placed all his songs and lyrics into the public domain, and then in 2022 he formally, officially relinquished the copyrights to all his songs. Then again, he was a man in his '90s who never married and had no children, so maybe he just figured to what end did he need those rights at that point?

When an Ozzy Osbourne dies, it's major news that gets heavy coverage in writing, on TV, on social media, et al. Tom Lehrer's death is not on Ozzy's level in terms of cultural impact. His life is not as full of twists and turns and the kind of stuff people tend to find interesting. Lehrer wrote clever songs laden with dark comedy and dedicated way more time to teaching math to college students than to said songs. He was never going to be cast in a movie like "Little Nicky" for a gag. And, to make assumptions about a stranger, it seems like Lehrer 100 percent wanted things to be that way.

He's far from one of the biggest names in comedic music, but Lehrer's influence in that realm is as massive as anybody's, and his passing brings the life of a cultishly-adored satirist to a close. Although, he'd probably want you to avoid being too sentimental about the whole thing.

(h/t Variety)