#365songs (60 / 365)

As with a previous song, I have a distinct if maybe somewhat reconstructed memory of hearing this song on the radio with one of my parents when I was in high school; as with that previous song, this one kicked off a whole era of my musical taste. It was a Tom Lehrer Era, of course, as much a part of the typical arc of a person like me as the Monty Python Era and the Weird Al Era, but it was also a Dudes Whomst Sing Fast era, about whom more to follow.

Ah, youth. I invested a significant amount of effort in memorizing and being able to perform this when I was in high school and probably (hopefully) impressed and annoyed my friends in equal measure. I performed it a cappella at a talent show on a bike tour in my high school years and won first prize, a pair of bike shoes, via an audience-applause-based scoring metric. I performed it again in a workplace holiday party talent show in a video call like 25 years later after spending about 15 minutes refreshing my memory. Sometime in between those two, I watched Daniel Radcliffe perform it on a talk show and said "wow he's just like me fr fr". Tom Lehrer's whole catalog is pretty one-of-a-kind (and in the public domain) but "The Elements" was my gateway drug and, weirdly for a song that doesn't really mean anything, it's the one that's meant the most to me.