That Was the Year That Was

Track listing

1. "National Brotherhood Week" – 2:35
2. "MLF Lullaby" – 2:25
3. "George Murphy" – 2:08
4. "The Folk Song Army" – 2:12
5. "Smut" – 3:15
6. "Send the Marines" – 1:46
7. "Pollution" – 2:17

1. "So Long, Mom " – 2:23
2. "Whatever Became of Hubert?" – 2:13
3. "New Math" – 4:28
4. "Alma" – 5:27
5. "Who's Next?" – 2:00
6. "Wernher von Braun" – 1:46
7. "The Vatican Rag" – 2:14

   Topics of songs

• "National Brotherhood Week" – Racism in [the United States|race relations in the US], specifically, a week-long program sponsored by the National Conference for Community and Justice held generally during the third week of February from the 1940s through the 1980s.
• "MLF Lullaby" – an ultimately failed US proposal for a multilateral nuclear force as part of NATO.
• "George Murphy" – George Murphy, dancer, actor and recently-elected junior senator for California. Democratic voters of the time questioned whether an actor with no political experience could function as a Senator. Lehrer also criticizes Murphy's comments about Mexicans working in the US, and refers briefly to the then-nascent political career of Ronald Reagan.
• "The Folk Song Army" – the folk revival of the 1960s, and specifically what Lehrer perceived to be the futility of protest music. Alludes to songs of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, especially "Venga Jaleo", which it excerpts musically.
• "Smut" – censorship of obscenity, and the 1957 US Supreme Court case Roth v. United States. 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" – US interventionist policy in other, usually weaker, countries, the most recent example being the deployment of the US Marine Corps in the Dominican Civil War 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 song.
• "Pollution" – environmental pollution. According to the liner notes of the album, this was the San Francisco version of the song, featuring the lines: "The breakfast garbage that you throw into the Bay / They drink at lunch in San Jose". The lyrics varied: for example, the version Lehrer performed in New York version referred respectively to Troy and Perth Amboy.

• "So Long, Mom " – nuclear war, mutually assured destruction, nostalgia over past wars, and television news. References a 1904 George M. Cohan song and show, Little Johnny Jones.
• "Whatever Became of Hubert?" – Hubert Humphrey, then US Vice President under Lyndon B. Johnson, and frustrations among liberals over Humphrey's perceived quiescence to the more domineering figure of Johnson.
• "New Math" – New Math, a trend at the time in the teaching of mathematics.
• "Alma" – the late Alma Mahler, a composer, painter, and the wife, successively, of Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius, and Franz Werfel.
• "Who's Next?" – nuclear proliferation. Lists numerous countries that either had already achieved the capacity to deploy nuclear weapons or could potentially do so.
• "Wernher Von Braun" – German-American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who had helped develop the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany before relocating to the US under Operation Paperclip and leading the US rocket development program during the 1960s.
• "The Vatican Rag" – the Second Vatican Council and the reform of Roman Catholic liturgy.