2025’s “Top” Ten Music Losses: Tom Lehrer (#1)

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Yeah, sue me. I don’t care. It’s my list after all. I knew that this man’s death would top my list unless something worse happened. While I’m glad nothing “worse” happened, I’d prefer him to not be on the list. My most heartbreaking loss of 2025 is someone you’ve probably never heard of. #1: Tom Lehrer Think about it. Tom Lehrer didn’t make that many albums, he hadn’t released an album since the 60s, and he hadn’t done any musical work since contributions to The Electric Company in the 1970s, and still there were a LOT of people mourning his death last July. Why were people weeping over the death of a man who chose to be a mathematics professor instead of continue with the brilliant satires that made him famous? Well, Lehrer was a pretty private man, so his reasons went to the grave with him. Maybe math is absolute (except when you get into those imaginary numbers [for those of you who’ve never been introduced, count yourself lucky…I mean, an imaginary number is defined as “the square root of negative one”]) and entertainment isn’t. Whatever the reason, this man who studied and then taught at Harvard didn’t want the fame. Someone came to him and asked to make a tribute website. Lehrer not only let him, but he signed the rights to the songs he wrote over to public domain! Of course, Lehrer always marched to his own drummer. He was college-educated, meaning he would have been an officer in the Army. Instead, he opted to serve as an enlisted man. He worked in classified projects while in the Army…and the very fact that he was in the Army is probably what made him so good at satire. There are satirists, and then there’s Tom Lehrer. I think Randy Newman is one of the greatest satirists in the world; so good, in fact, that, as Rolling Stone accurately stated of him, “If Randy Newman sang ‘God Bless America’ straight you wouldn’t believe him.” But Randy Newman only became America’s musical satirist because Lehrer dropped out of the race. I mean, this is a guy who did a song about Nazi-turned-American nuclear scientist Wernher von Braun and proposed that the Catholic Church “jazz up” their music to coincide with the Vatican II changes (“The Vatican Rag”). The recording catalog is small compared to so many others on this month’s list; however, there was no one like him. And there probably will never be another one like him. Thanks for all the laughs, Tom. And thank you all for reading. Tom Lehrer Born Thomas Andrew Lehrer, April 9, 1928, New York City Died July 26, 2025, Cambridge, Massachusetts (natural causes) (age 97) What may be Lehrer’s best-known song, “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”: