That Was the Year That Was (1965) is a live album recorded at the hungry i in San Francisco, containing performances by Tom Lehrer of satiric topical songs he originally wrote for the NBC television series That Was The Week That Was, known informally as TW3 (1964–65). All of the songs related to items then in the news. The album peaked at #18 on [[Billboard 200|Billboard'''s Top 200 Albums]] on January 8, 1966 and was on the chart for 51weeks.
In October 2020, Lehrer transferred the music and lyrics for all songs he had ever written into the public domain. In November 2022, he formally relinquished the copyright and performing/recording rights on his songs, making all music and lyrics composed by him free for anyone to use.
Track listing
Side one: "National Brotherhood Week" – 2:35 "MLF Lullaby" – 2:25 "George Murphy" – 2:08 "The Folk Song Army" – 2:12 "Smut" – 3:15 "Send the Marines" – 1:46 "Pollution" – 2:17
Side two: "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" – 2:23 "Whatever Became of Hubert?" – 2:13 "New Math" – 4:28 "Alma" – 5:27 "Who's Next?" – 2:00 "Wernher von Braun" – 1:46 "The Vatican Rag" – 2:14
Topics of songs
Side one
"National Brotherhood Week" – race relations in the U.S.; specifically, a week-long program sponsored by the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) held generally during the third week of February from the 1940s through the 1980s. (Lehrer: "It's fun to eulogize the people you despise, as long as you don't let 'em in your school.") "MLF Lullaby" – Ribs an ultimately failed U.S. proposal for a multilateral nuclear force as part of NATO "George Murphy" – George Murphy, dancer, actor, U.S. Senator from California, and Robert F. Kennedy (D, NY), the putative third senator from Massachusetts. Democratic voters of the time questioned whether an actor with no political experience could function as a Senator. (Lehrer: "Oh, gee, it's great: at last we've got a Senator who can really sing and dance!") He also criticizes Murphy's comments about Mexicans working in the US. "The Folk Song Army" – Topical songs as part of the folk revival of the 1960s; also alludes to songs of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, especially "Venga Jaleo" which it excerpts musically. They are mocked as ineffective and having claimed bravery in advocating popular causes. (Lehrer: "Remember the war against Franco / That's the kind where each of us belongs / Though he may have won all the battles / We had all the good songs") "Smut" – Censorship of obscenity, and the 1957 U.S. Supreme Court case Roth v. United States, which coined the expression "redeeming social importance" (Lehrer: "As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my aunt Hortense / To be smut it must be utterly without redeeming social importance"). The song refers to Fanny Hill, which at the time of the recording was engaged in an anti-obscenity case, Memoirs v Massachusetts, that would not be resolved until the following year. It also references Lady Chatterley's Lover, which had been subject to a similar case, R v Penguin Books Ltd, in Britain in 1960. "Send the Marines" – The history and habit of using the United States Marine Corps to intervene in other, usually weaker, countries, the latest example being the most recent U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic in April 1965. (In 2003, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix told a Swedish radio program that he did not think that the Invasion of Iraq, "in the way it was justified, was compatible with the UN Charter," and then had the station play this very song.) "Pollution" – Environmental pollution (Lehrer: "Turn on your tap / And get hot and cold running crud.")