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Tom Lehrer, song satirist, dies at 97
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tom Lehrer, the popular song satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War, then largely abandoned his music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other universities, has died. He was 97.
Longtime friend David Herder said Lehrer died Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not specify a cause of death.
Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format without any fee in return.
A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at age 18), Lehrer soon turned his very sharp mind to old traditions and current events. His songs included “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “The Old Dope Peddler” (set to a tune reminiscent of “The Old Lamplighter”), “Be Prepared” (in which he mocked the Boy Scouts) and “The Vatican Rag,” in which Lehrer, an atheist, poked at the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. (Sample lyrics: “Get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries. Bow your head with great respect, and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.”)
Accompanying himself on piano, he performed the songs in a colorful style reminiscent of such musical heroes as Gilbert and Sullivan and Stephen Sondheim, the latter a lifelong friend. Lehrer was often likened to such contemporaries as Allen Sherman and Stan Freberg for his comic riffs on culture and politics and he was cited by Randy Newman and “Weird Al” Yankovic among others as an influence.
He mocked the forms of music he didn’t like (modern folk songs, rock ‘n’ roll and modern jazz), laughed at the threat of nuclear annihilation and denounced discrimination.
But he attacked in such an erudite, even polite, manner that almost no one objected.
“Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,” musicologist Barry Hansen once said. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer’s songs, “The Remains of Tom Lehrer,” and had featured Lehrer’s music for decades on his syndicated “Dr. Demento” radio show.
Lehrer’s body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three dozen songs.
“When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn’t, I didn’t,” Lehrer told The Associated Press in 2000 during a rare interview. “I wasn’t like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit. … It wasn’t like I had writer’s block.”
He’d gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master’s degree in math.
He cut his first record in 1953, “Songs by Tom Lehrer,” which included “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,” lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and the “Fight Fiercely, Harvard,” suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song.
After a two-year stint in the Army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called “More of Tom Lehrer” and a live recording called “An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer,” nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960.
But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching math, though he did some writing and performing on the side.
Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public.
“I enjoyed it up to a point,” he told The AP in 2000. “But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.”
He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show “That Was the Week That Was,” a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated “Saturday Night Live” a decade later.
He released the songs the following year in an album titled “That Was the Year That Was.” The material included “Who’s Next?” that ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb … perhaps Alabama? (He didn’t need to tell his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation at the time.) “Pollution” takes a look at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be cleaned up.
He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children’s show “The Electric Company.” He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works.
His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue “Tomfoolery” and he made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration honoring that musical’s producer, Cameron Mackintosh.
Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York City, the son of a successful necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his family and walking through Central Park day or night.
After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his master’s degree, he spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate.
“I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,” he once said. “But I just wanted to be a grad student, it’s a wonderful life. That’s what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can’t be a Ph.D. and a grad student at the same time.”
He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters.
From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enroll in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs.
“But it’s a real math class,” he said at the time. “I don’t do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly.”
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Corrects spelling to ‘Yankovic,’ not ‘Jankovic’ in the fifth paragraph.
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Former Associated Press writer John Rogers contributed to this story. Rogers retired from The AP in 2021.
NEW YORK — Naomi Osaka eliminated Coco Gauff 6-3, 6-2 in 64 minutes at the US Open on Monday with a far more confident and consistent brand of tennis to reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal in more than 4½ years.
Osaka advances to her fifth major quarterfinal, and first since giving birth to daughter Shai in July 2023. Every time Osaka has made the quarterfinal round of a major, she has gone on to win it, her last Slam coming at the 2021 Australian Open.
The No. 23-seeded Osaka was better throughout than No. 3 Gauff, whose repeated mistakes really made the difference in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Osaka never faced a break point and lost just six points on her serve.
“I was super locked in, to be honest. I was really locked in,” said Osaka, a 27-year-old who was born in Japan and moved to the U.S. with her family at age 3. “I felt like everyone wanted to watch a really great match, and I hope that’s what you got.”
Osaka displayed the demeanor, big serve and booming strokes that have carried her to four major championships, all on hard courts. That includes titles at the US Open in 2018 and 2020, and at the Australian Open in 2019 and 2021.
It was at the French Open later in 2021 that Osaka helped spark a global conversation about mental health by revealing she felt anxiety and depression. She then took a series of breaks from the tour.
That most recent trophy at Melbourne Park was the last time Osaka had even made it as far as the fourth round at any Slam event until this match against Gauff, a 21-year-old from Florida who owns two major trophies. The first came at Flushing Meadows in 2023 and the second at the French Open this June.
For Osaka, this marks a real return to her best play since she returned to the tour after a 17-month maternity leave.
“I’m a little sensitive and I don’t want to cry, but honestly, I just had so much fun out here,” said Osaka, who first played Gauff back at the 2019 US Open, also in Ashe, and won that one, too.
“I was in the stands like two months after I gave birth to my daughter, watching Coco. I just really wanted an opportunity to come out here and play,” Osaka told the crowd. “This is my favorite court in the world, and it means so much for me to be back here.”
Gauff came out jittery at the start. Her serve was fine; other strokes were the problem. She finished with 33 unforced errors — way more than Osaka’s 12.
Trying to rework her serve during this tournament with the help of biomechanics expert Gavin MacMillan, Gauff got broken right off the bat and was down 2-0 after just five minutes, dropping eight of the initial nine points while making five unforced errors.
Whether because it’s what the prematch strategy dictated or because of how the beginning unfolded, Gauff cranked up the velocity in her second service game. The results were unimpeachable. She hit four first serves in — each arriving no slower than 110 mph, with a high of 115 mph — and held at love with a pair of aces and a pair of service winners.
Still, this is where the key difference was: Osaka used her big forehand, her best stroke, to go after Gauff’s forehand, her worst stroke, and it worked wonders. By the end of the first set, Gauff had made 16 unforced errors and Osaka only five.
ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Transfer deadline day biggest moves: Liverpool land Alexander Isak but Marc Guehi deal falls through
The summer transfer window is officially closed in most European leagues and things were definitely exciting. Liverpool have finally agreed terms with Newcastle for the transfer of Alexander Isak, though the fate of a Marc Guehi move remains in limbo. Manchester City have agreed a deal with PSG for the transfer of Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, while Ederson is set to join Fenerbahce. On Monday, among the top European leagues, only LaLiga’s window remains open, not shutting until 6 p.m. ET. Other leagues and associations around Europe, like in Türkiye, and in Saudi Arabia will close at later dates, creating opportunities to sell for players and teams that couldn’t find a solution in the summer before the deadline of September 1. Free agents, on the other hand, will still be able to sign with a club if they are not registered with another team.
The top deals of the day
- Alexander Isak from Newcastle to Liverpool for $175 million
- Gianluigi Donnarumma from PSG to Manchester City for $30 million
- Edon Zhegrova from Lille to Juventus for $20 million
- Loic Openda from RB Leipzig to Juventus for $40 million
- Jadon Sancho from Manchester United to Aston Villa on loan
- Adrien Rabiot from OM to AC Milan for $10 million
- Yoane Wissa from Brentford to Newcastle for $73 million
- Senne Lammens from Royal Antwerp to Manchester United for $23 million
- Randal Kolo Muani from PSG to Tottenham on loan
- Manuel Akanji from Manchester City to Inter on loan
- Benjamin Pavard from Inter to OM on loan
- Nicolas Jackson from Chelsea to Bayern Munich on loan with buy option included in the deal
The Isak saga is finally over
Alexander Isak is a new Liverpool striker in what will be the highest fee in the history of the Premier League after the Reds signed the Swedish striker for around $175 million from Newcastle. It was one of the longest transfer sagas of the summer 2025 as the player pushed to leave Newcastle in the summer transfer window, refusing to play and train with the team coached by Eddie Howe. While Arne Slot’s side kept believing they could land on the deal, the move became a reality only in the last day of the transfer business, as Isak underwent the medical tests in the morning of the Deadline Day. Liverpool signed both Isak and Florian Wirtz in the summer 2025, the two biggest transfer fees paid in the history of the league, as the German striker also joined earlier for $133 million from Bayer Leverkusen.
An unexpected move for Akanji
If most of the deals that went through in the last days of business were kind of expected, there are some that really came out of nowhere. In particular, Inter have decided to sign Manuel Akanji from Manchester City on loan with an option to buy included in the deal, while at the same time Olympique Marseille signed French international Benjamin Pavard from the Nerazzurri. Pavard leaves the Italian Serie A two years after he joined from Bayern Munich, winning one Serie A title under Simone Inzaghi in his first season at the club, while Akanji was also on the radar of AC Milan, but then decided to join their crosstown rivals on the last day of the summer transfer window.
The story of the day — the deal that didn’t happen
Liverpool were probably the most active team of the window, and they also showed it on deadline day when they signed Isak from Newcastle, but also failed to sign Marc Guehi from Crystal Palace. During Monday afternoon the Reds agreed on a deal to sign him from Crystal Palace for a fee of over $46 million, with a 10% sell-on clause included, but then the deal collapsed as the team coached by Oliver Glasner was not able to sign the replacement for their club captain on time, despite him having a contract running in the summer 2026. After today’s events, there’s a real chance he could leave next year as a free agent, which would be wild, especially considering the club could have made a significant profit by selling him this summer.
Packers pass rusher Micah Parsons has been dealing with an L4/L5 facet joint sprain in his back and he may receive a facet injection before Sunday’s game against the Detroit Lions if needed to help him play, sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Monday.
Before trading Parsons last week, the Dallas Cowboys prescribed him a five-day course of prednisone, an anti-inflammatory corticosteroid to help him recover from back tightness. They also had him on a physical therapy program.
Parsons has been practicing this week, and he is trying to play Sunday, although one source told Schefter it still is not certain if he will.
The Packers traded two first-round draft picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark to the Cowboys last Thursday to acquire Parsons. Green Bay then signed him to a four-year, $188 million contract extension that includes $120 million fully guaranteed at signing and $136 million in total guarantees, making him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history, sources told ESPN.
The move occurred after a training camp hold-in when Parsons sat out of Cowboys practices because of back tightness.
Parsons flew to Green Bay on Friday, passed his physical and signed his contract. He picked No. 1 for his jersey, becoming the second Packers player to wear that number and first since Curly Lambeau in 1925-26.
ESPN’s Rob Demovsky contributed to this report.
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