The 37 or so songs of American satirist Tom Lehrer (1928- ) should all be part of the vocabulary of, well, everyone. They are dirty (Smut, I’m a market they can’t glut), sick (I hold your hand in mind and “Be Prepared” – “don’t solicit for your sister, that’s not nice; unless you get a good percentage of her price” – we will come back to sisters!) and political (Send the Marines, Werner von Braun).
Dazzling rhymes (“who needs a hobby, like tennis or philately? I’ve got a hobby: re-reading Lady Chatterley”), acerbic jabs, much-more-than-competent piano-ing, it’s all there. Can hold a tune too.
And also, some of Lehrer’s songs are… ecological….
Lehrer was writing mostly from the 1940s to the 1960s This period, of rampant economic growth (thanks to pent-up demand, technological developments from the war, and Keynesianism), is now called The Great Acceleration. Human numbers were going up (at one point, in a song about nuclear war called “We will all go together when we go” Lehrer sang “nearly 3 billion hunks of well done steak” – well, we’re now nearing triple that)
The mindless consumerism (A Christmas Carol) was galloping apace too.
Between his first retirement in the early 1960s and coming back to do “That was the week that was” in 1965, the ecological consciousness really advanced, thanks in large part to Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.”
With typical gallows humour, Lehrer sang of Pollution
“If you visit American city, you will find it very pretty
Just two things of which you must beware
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air.”
So, we need to think of Lehrer as one of the first great satirists of the Anthropocene.
In his intro to his song So Long Mom: A song for World War 3 Lehrer had this to say
“I feel that if any songs are gonna come out of World War III, we’d better start writing them now. I have one here; you might call it a bit of pre-nostalgia.”
Yup.
And we need more songs about the Anthropocene. Which brings me to the next post… And sisters. Twisted Sisters…
marchudson.net 
Leave a comment