History Music / ThatWasTheYearThatWas

!!The Tropes they throw into the Bay, they Trope at lunch in San Jose:

!!This album contains examples of:

** In "National Brotherhood Week", Tom mentions that on the first day of the titular week that year, UsefulNotes/MalcomX was murdered, which he notes "gives us an idea of how effective the whole thing is!"

* EverybodyHatesMathematics: "New Math" pokes fun at this attitude, especially the result of the 1960s attempt to introduce set theory in elementary school. As Tom himself says, "The idea is to understand what you are doing rather than to get the right answer!"

* EverybodyHatesMathematics: "New Math" pokes fun at this attitude, especially the result of the 1960s attempt to introduce set theory in elementary school.

-->"Sixty-four? How did sixty-four get into it?", ''I hear you cry''\\

* CaptainObviousAesop: [[invoked]] One of the targets of "The Folk Song Army" is the fact that most of these songs have rather obvious things that they're railing against. "We all hate poverty, war, and injustice, unlike the rest of you squares", as Lehrer sings in the song, tongue firmly in cheek. In the opening monologue before playing the song, Lehrer notes that it takes "a certain amount of courage" to sing a song about being in favor of peace, justice, and brotherhood, in full SarcasmMode.

* EducationalSong: Parodied with "New Math", which purports to be an attempt to make the 'New Math' understandable, but is really trying to make it as confusing as possible. In the song, Lehrer does a simple math problem of 342 minus 173; he overexplains the problem first, then does the same problem in base 8 instead of base 10. The whole point of the song was that it was making math unnecessarily complicated in Lehrer's mind.
* EthnicMenialLabor: Discussed in "George Murphy", in the context of insensitive comments the real Murphy had made about Mexican migrants.

** Pretty much the entirety of "Wernher Von Braun", including:

Take us to your Lieder\\

-->''All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder\\
For filth (I'm glad to say) is in the mind of the beholder\\
When correctly viewed\\
Everything is lewd''

** Having said that, the song is accurate enough that it can be used to teach subtraction (and I do!)...

''That Was the Year That Was'' is a 1965 LiveAlbum (recorded at the hungry i in UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco) by humorous singer-songwriter Music/TomLehrer, featuring songs he had written during a stint on the American incarnation of the satirical current affairs show ''Series/ThatWasTheWeekThatWas''. Most of the songs on the album, as well as a few of Lehrer's older songs, were performed on that show by their resident performers; "The Folk Song Army", "Smut", "Alma", "Wernher von Braun" and "The Vatican Rag" were not featured on ''[=TW3=]''.

* TheGreatPoliticsMessUp: A lot of the GallowsHumor in his songs is predicated on the fact that nuclear war with the USSR and the subsequent TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt was considered inevitable at the time.

This was the only album not to be issued on Tom Lehrer's own label; it was released on the Creator/RepriseRecords label. As part of the deal to issue the album, Reprise also got the rights to Lehrer's back catalog; in 1966, they reissued ''Music/AnEveningWastedWithTomLehrer'' and had Lehrer rerecord ''Music/SongsByTomLehrer'' in stereo.

* CaptainObviousAesop: [[invoked]] One of the targets of "The Folk Song Army" is the fact that most of these songs have rather obvious things that they're railing against. "We all hate poverty, war, and injustice, unlike the rest of you squares", as Lehrer sings in the song. In the opening monologue before playing the song, he notes that it takes "a certain amount of courage" to sing a song about being in favor of peace, justice, and brotherhood, in full SarcasmMode.

* EducationalSong: Parodied with "New Math", which purports to be an attempt to make the 'New Math' understandable, but is really trying to make it as confusing as possible. In the song, Lehrer does a rather simple problem of 342-173; he overexplains the problem first, then does the same problem in base 8 instead of base 10. The whole point of the song was that it was making math unnecessarily complicated in Lehrer's mind.