This week’s choice is the song “Bright College Days” by Tom Lehrer, because it seems appropriate as the educational year swings into action once again.
Soon we’ll be out amid the cold world’s strife.
Tom Lehrer (1928—)
Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life.
Poem 337. Bright College Days
Bright College Days, oh, carefree days that fly,
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
Let’s drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.
Turn on the spigot,
Pour the beer and swig it,
And gaudeamus igit – itur.
Here’s to parties we tossed,
To the games that we lost.
(We shall claim that we won them some day.)
To the girls young and sweet,
To the spacious back seat
Of our roommate’s beat-up Chevrolet.
To the beer and benzedrine,
To the way that the dean
Tried so hard to be “pals” with us all.
To excuses we fibbed,
To the papers we cribbed
From the genius who lived down the hall.
To the tables down at Mory’s (wherever that may be)
Let us drink a toast to all we love the best.
We shall sleep through all the lectures and cheat on the exams,
And we’ll pass—and be forgotten with the rest.
Soon we’ll be out amid the cold world’s strife.
Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life.
But as we go our sordid separate ways,
We shall ne’er forget thee,
Thou golden college days.
Hearts full of youth,
Hearts full of truth,
Six parts gin to one part vermouth.
Like many of Lehrer’s songs, this adroitly satirizes its subject—the academic life as experienced by American undergraduates since its founding. It is inspired by “Bright College Years,” the alma mater (school song) of Yale University and makes several references to Yale. Lehrer was at the rival institution Harvard and evidently couldn’t pass up the opportunity to poke fun at another university.
The song parodies the style of alma maters that sentimentally celebrate their university and the friendships made there.
The opening line is clearly a reference to Yale’s alma mater but also mentions “carefree days that fly”—a keenly observed comment on the transience of one’s university life. The second line was always followed by a pause as Lehrer removed his spectacles, lifted them on high and got a big laugh. After this gag, he returns to the mock sincerity of a song sung at the end of one’s academic career but he can’t resist conflating the state of the professors with that of their halls, perfectly evoking the picture of rather unworldly dons whose single-minded attention to academia have left them figuratively covered in climbing plants.
The next three lines are amusingly rhymed to bring in the name of a popular academic song: spigot/swig it/igit, Gaudeamus igitur (“So Let Us Rejoice”) is sung at graduation ceremonies in some European countries.
The song progresses through supposedly nostalgic memories though the memories in question are less salubrious than those usually intended to be induced by such a song: parties, games (of football presumably since “We shall claim that we won them someday”), surreptitious activities in the back seat of a car, alcohol and amphetamines, the slightly shady sounding dean who wanted to be “pals”, excuses for unspecified shortcomings, and plagiarism of the reliable “genius who lived down the hall.”
The next four lines would be sung to the tune of “The Whiffenpoof Song,” the song that traditionally closes performances by the Whiffenpoofs, an a cappella group at Yale University who perform on Monday nights at Mory’s Temple Bar—the Mory’s of Lehrer’s song “(wherever that may be)” and besides the reference to the singing group, highlights the occasional student vices of sleeping through lectures and cheating on exams, with a last line that rather wistfully observes that once their qualifications are gained, they will be forgotten like so many others.
The next stanza looks forward to “the cold world’s strife” and the trials and tribulations to be found in working for a living as each goes their “sordid separate ways” and happily asserts that amidst the drudgery, the memory of “Thou golden college days” will remain bright.
The song finishes with a celebration of youth and advice in the shape of a cocktail recipe.
I like it because it lampoons the corny college songs beloved of a certain class of ex-scholar and reminds us that the academic life, though it may be viewed through a mist of pleasurable nostalgia, is as rife with misbehaviour and questionable morality as any other sphere of human activity. I have always loved that line “Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life”—it is such a funny but accurate observation of the dangers we can imagine as we leave education.
This is quite a popular subject on YouTube, but it mostly links to uploads of Lehrer’s own performance, which is pretty definitive so that’s the link below.
In 2020 Lehrer put all the music and lyrics for the songs he had written into the public domain, so that they are now free for anyone to perform or adapt. Lehrer’s performances are generally available on YouTube though the warning of a New York Times reviewer seems apt:
Mr Lehrer’s muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste.
J.S. Wilson, The New York Times, 9 February 1959.
Links
- Read about Gaudeamus igitur and the Whiffenpoofs at WIkipedia.
- Listen to Tom Lehrer perform the song on YouTube.
- Discover his other songs at the website he set up when he put them all in the public domain, although he has said that it may vanish at any time.