Tom Lehrer has released all of his songs into the public domain

Tom Lehrer has some fantastic quotes - if you like dark humor.<p>“Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”<p>“If after hearing my songs just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or perhaps to strike a loved one it will all have been worth the while.”<p>&quot;I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.&quot;<p>And now, perhaps the greatest of them all:<p>&quot;In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs. So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.&quot;<p>Godspeed, Tom, and thank you for your humor and your music!

I always loved the first few lines[0] of &quot;WE WILL ALL GO TOGETHER WHEN WE GO&quot; because I thought the rhyming of some of the words was so creative and I&#x27;ve (still) never heard it done that way anywhere else:<p>... funeral<p>... sooner or L(ater)<p>and<p>... tragic<p>... adjec(tives)<p>Listen here [1].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;we-will-all-go-together-when-we-go.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;we-wil...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;we-will-all-go-together-when-we-go&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;we-will-all-go-together-when-we-g...</a>

&quot;The Elements&quot; is the Tom Lehrer song that made the biggest impression on me. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Elements_(song)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Elements_(song)</a> , <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM</a><p><pre><code> There&#x27;s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium, ...</code></pre>

1975<p>&quot;Is this really appropriate?,&quot; my mom to my dad.<p>&quot;It&#x27;s better than TV,&quot; my dad to my mom.<p>My 8-yo self rolling back and forth on the brown shag carpet wearing my pajamas in front of the wooden stereo console, warmed by the glow of the tubes inside, laughing with my dad to the pure comedy gold of Tom Lehrer&#x27;s voice pouring from the speakers.<p>We didn&#x27;t have fishing or hunting together, but Dad and I will always have those evenings with Mr. Lehrer and a sip of Balvenie.

On the albums page, the link for &quot;The Remains of Tom Lehrer (disc 1)&quot; RAR file has a typo. It should be <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;trotl1.rar" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;trotl1...</a> (replace the last lowercase L with 1).

This is a little strange... the notice on his website says &quot;November 1, 2022&quot;, but here&#x27;s an article (and discussion) from two years ago stating the same thing: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24833683" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24833683</a>

There&#x27;s a typo in one link. The RAR download for &quot;The Remains of Tom Lehrer (disc 1)&quot; links to [0]; it should link to [1].<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;trotll.rar" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;trotll...</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;trotl1.rar" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;trotl1...</a>

Given that it&#x27;s released into public domain but site won&#x27;t remain up indefinitely, someone should probably add it to internet archive collection?

From Wikipedia: Other artists who cite Lehrer as an influence include &quot;Weird Al&quot; Yankovic, whose work generally addresses more popular and less technical or political subjects... Yankovic saw Daniel Radcliffe (who called Lehrer his &quot;hero&quot;)perform &quot;The Elements&quot; on The Graham Norton Show, which led to Radcliffe starring in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

My favourite is Wernher Von Braun.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio</a><p>Thank you Tom Lehrer for all the memories and the laughs, and a biting satire that&#x27;s still fresh.

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics<p>And the Catholics hate the Protestants<p>And the Hindus hate the Muslims<p>And everybody hates the Jews<p>— National Brotherhood Week, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;CgASBVMyVFI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;CgASBVMyVFI</a>

Growing up where I did, there seemed to be “math people” and “art people.” Discovering Tom Lehrer on Dr. Demento on late Sunday nights proved to me this distinction was artificial: Music and Math can and do coexist in many people, and the result is often beautiful for the two having mixed.

Only please, remember to always call it &quot;research&quot;!

My favorite is probably also the most famous--&quot;Wernher von Braun&quot;. You can listen to that one and all of the others on Tom Lehrer&#x27;s website here, in a continuous stream: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;locserendipity.com&#x2F;Lehrer&#x2F;Lehrer.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;locserendipity.com&#x2F;Lehrer&#x2F;Lehrer.html</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;</a>

Thank you Tom Lehrer. For the music, the math, and the comedy and now, the music.

I wonder how his health is and what life looks like to 94 year old Tom Lehrer. It&#x27;s sad that people grow old and die. His must surely have been a fascinating life. I hope he&#x27;s still having fun.

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and The Masochism Tango are two of my favorites. Introduce to me in an honors English class by an odder-than-normal English teacher

This is amazing. Bless his soul.<p>Watch some companies are going to do copyright claims on his songs on Youtube.

No one&#x27;s quoted this yet, so:<p>============<p>Be prepared! And be careful not to do<p>Your good deeds when there&#x27;s no one watching you<p>If you&#x27;re looking for adventure of a<p>New and different kind<p>And you come across a Girl Scout who is<p>Similarly inclined<p>Don&#x27;t be nervous, don&#x27;t be flustered, don&#x27;t be scared<p>Be prepared!

That&#x27;s great, but I&#x27;m wondering whether the statement at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;</a> constitutes a legally safe license, in the way something like a CC0 license would? Obviously Tom isn&#x27;t going to sue anybody, but I&#x27;m wondering if a proper copyright lawyer&#x27;s eyebrows might be raised if you included it in your chain of title docs.

Why not just link the official web: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;</a> ?

That&#x27;s admirable. I wish more artists – whether musician, filmmaker, author, etc. – did this.

The Internet Archive has archived both the sheet music, lyrics, and songs as FLACs, so when the site disappears, it won&#x27;t disappear.

Why link to this social media thing instead of Lehrer’s site with his announcement?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;</a>

quick and dirty powershell to download all the pdfs<p>Invoke-WebRequest -Uri <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;category&#x2F;songs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;category&#x2F;songs&#x2F;</a> `<p>| Select-Object -Expand Links `<p>| Where-Object { $_.href.EndsWith(&quot;.pdf&quot;) } `<p>| ForEach-Object {<p><pre><code> $path = $_.href $fname = $path.Split(&#x27;&#x2F;&#x27;)[-1] $stuff = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com$path -o $(Join-Path -Path .&#x2F; $fname) }</code></pre>

Those of you rushing to download before the site goes down —- I’m certain the Internet Archive will have these in perpetuity (or for as long as the IA is around)

&quot;Poisoning Pigeons in the Park&quot; is one of our family&#x27;s all time favorites. It gets my boys laughing every time.

the link to the remains of tom lehrer (part 1) seems to be incorrect on the download page, the correct one is this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;trotl1.rar" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2021&#x2F;10&#x2F;trotl1...</a>

It would be nice if this inspired something equivalent to The Giving Pledge[0], but for creative content owners.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Giving_Pledge" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Giving_Pledge</a>

That&#x27;s amazing. Is there any precedent for this from an artist of comparable stature?

There is no &quot;public domain&quot; in the EU. Did he cross-license it with CC0 or similar? Otherwise his works are still protected in the EU and he or his estate can still sue for copyright infringement.

Just wonderful. He&#x27;s set the example many should follow.<p>I grew up to these songs and it&#x27;s great to know they&#x27;re avaliable in perpetuity.

Fun fact: Tom Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot.

According to Wikipedia he is 94 years old

I fear that this may actually be very bad news. He&#x27;s also shutting down the website. Tom is 94.

The Animaniacs owe so much to Tom.

&quot;Base eight is just like base ten, really... If you are missing two fingers.&quot;

Is this news from 2 years ago? Or at least early November?<p>Sharing random post from Mastodon instead of url is unclear<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tomlehrersongs.com&#x2F;</a>