History YMMV / TomLehrer

* HilariousInHindsight: His 1960s song "George Murphy," about a senator with a former showbiz career, gets a cheap laugh from the less-than-impressive career of another politician with similar background...RonaldReagan.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: By 1960s standards, his work was some of the funniest, most obscene material written. Today, it's fairly tame.

*** Decades later, AlanMoore wrote ''Lost Girls,'' a pornographic graphic novel starring, among others, Wendy Darling and Dorothy Gale.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: His work was widely known for being extremely vulgar by 1960s standards, but today it's fairly tame.

* SeinfeldIsUnoriginal: His work was widely known for being extremely vulgar by 1960s standards, but today it's mostly tame.

* BlackComedy Lots and lots of examples, but "I Got It From Agnes" has this doozy: ''Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/[[ParentalIncest She got it from her daddy, who just gives her everything]]...''

* TheMasochismTango: The TropeNamer.

--->You're on a Thialand trip

--->How do you bail whn you notice she's a guy?

** Special mention must surely go to "I Got it from Agnes", which ''opens'' with the simple premise that an STD is working its way around his group of friends and [[BlueAndOrangeMorality they're happy with this]]. Then, as it lists who got it from whom, you notice around the second verse that some of his friends are clearly [[QueerAsTropes gay]] - a little controversial for its day, but nothing major. ''Then'' it mentions Pierre, who got it from [[ThreesomeSubtext Francois and Jack]]. And Daphne who ''[[ParentalIncest got it from her father]]''. And Daniel, whose '''[[BestialityIsDepraved spaniel]]''' has it now. And then it reveals that their dentist even got it and they're ''' ''[[InstantSedation still]] [[BlackComedyRape wondering]] [[DudeShesLikeInAComa how]]'' '''.

** From "Lobachevsky":--->Plagiarize,

--->But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize! [[hottip:*:...only be sure always to call it, please... "research."]]

* MemeticMutation: YTMND seems to like putting together "The Elements"/"New Math" together with a clip of [[MonkeyIsland Stan]] talking.

* {{Squick}}: It is a considerable credit to his songwriting talents that even after nearly half a century and all the moral decay that entails, the BlackComedy of some of his lyrics can still turn a few heads.

* HarsherInHindsight: Possibly ''I Got It From Agnes'', written between the introduction of antibiotics and the rise of AIDs. For a few decades 'V.D.' was unpleasant but not that scary.

* BlackComedy Lots and lots of examples, but I Got It From Agnes has this doozy: ''Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/[[ParentalIncest She got it from her daddy, who just gives her everything]]...''

** Another pair of examples is ''The Old Dope Peddler'', which was so over the top when it was written that people nearly died of laughter, but when performed to modern audiences, the laughter just . . . dies away by the end because its too typical, and ''The Masochism Tango'', which is so over the top it ''still'' crosses the line in the day and age of the ObligatoryBondageSong.

* BlackComedy Lots and lots of examples, but I Got It From Agnes has this dozy: ''Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/[[ParentalIncest She got it from her daddy, who just gives her everything]]...''

** Special mention must surely go to "I Got it from Agnes", which ''opens'' with the simple premise that an STD is working its way around his group of friends and [[BlueAndOrangeMorality they're happy with this]]. Then, as it lists who got it from whom, you notice around the second verse that some of his friends are clearly [[QueerAsTropes gay]] - a little controversial for its day, but nothing major. ''Then'' it mentions Pierre, who got it from [[ThreesomeSubtext Francois and Jack]]. And Daphne who ''[[ParentalIncest got it from her father]]''. And Daniel, whose '''[[ButYouScrewOneGoat spaniel]]''' has it now. And then it reveals that their dentist even got it and they're ''' ''[[InstantSedation still]] [[BlackComedyRape wondering]] [[DudeShesLikeInAComa how]]'' '''.

* DeadBabyComedy Lots and lots of examples, but I Got It From Agnes has this dozy: ''Max got it from Edith, who gets it every spring/[[ParentalIncest She got it from her daddy, who just gives her everything]]...''

* {{Squick}}: It is a considerable credit to his songwriting talents that even after nearly half a century and all the moral decay that entails, the DeadBabyComedy of some of his lyrics can still turn a few heads.

* BeyondTheImpossible: He earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Harvard. At 19. Yeah.

** From "Lobachevsky":
--->Plagiarize,

* {{Squick}}: It is a considerable credit to his songwriting talents that even after nearly half a century and all the moral decay that entails, the DeadBabyComedy of some of his lyrics can still turn a few heads.

--->But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize!

* BetterThanItSounds: "New Math". It's a brilliant, hilarious song that is, in its entirety, an explanation of how to do a simple subtraction problem in both base ten and base eight. Yes, for some reason, this was considered to be a good idea in first grade math courses at the time.

** All the more epic as he did this in the 1950s.
*** He ''was'' talking about [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman park pigeons]], though, not people.