"The Elements" (1959) is a song by musical humorist Tom Lehrer, which recites the names of all the chemical elements known at the time of writing, up to number 102, nobelium. It can be found on his albums Tom Lehrer in Concert, More Songs by Tom Lehrer and An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer. The song is sung to the tune of the Major-General's Song from The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan.[1]
The song is also included in the musical revue Tom Foolery, which also includes many of Lehrer's other songs.
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The ordering of elements in the lyrics fits the meter of the song, and includes much alliteration, and thus has little or no relation to the ordering in the periodic table. This can be seen for example in the opening and closing lines:
Lehrer was a Harvard math lecturer, and the final rhyme of "Harvard" and "discovered" is delivered in a parody of a Boston accent—a non-rhotic manner—so that the two words rhyme. Lehrer did not normally speak with that accent.
Lehrer drew the inspiration for "The Elements" from the song "Tchaikovsky and Other Russians", written by Ira Gershwin, which listed fifty Russian composers in a similar manner.[2]
"The Elements" differs from the "Major-General's Song" in that:
Although "The Elements" is a pastiche of the Major-General's song, it has itself been parodied, including by the group Amateur Transplants (of London Underground fame) as The Drugs Song. The Jewish parody group Shlock Rock acknowledges Lehrer and "The Elements" as inspiration for "The Shabbat Song".[3] In the episode "Ex-File" of NCIS, Timothy McGee and Abby Sciuto hum the song, and it forms a key clue in their case. In The Big Bang Theory episode "The Pants Alternative", a drunk Sheldon Cooper starts to sing the song during his acceptance of an award from his university. In the 2006 episode of Gilmore Girls called "The Real Paul Anka", Luke Danes's daughter April and her classmates sing the song on the bus.[4] Another pastiche of "The Major-General's song" in "The Elements" mode is the "Boy Scout Merit Badge Song," which lists all the merit badges of the Boy Scouts of America.[5]
The song has been covered by other artists. For example, the rapper Jesse Dangerously covered "The Elements" on his album How to Express Your Dissenting Political Viewpoint Through Origami, where the song is titled "Tom Lehrer's The Elements".[6] The Gas House Gang also sang the song on their first album.[7] Daniel Radcliffe sang "The Elements" on The Graham Norton Show in 2010.[8] In the first season of sketch comedy website LoadingReadyRun, regulars Graham Stark and Andrew Cownden made a video of Stark singing the song accompanied by Cownden on the piano.
The song is included in Theodore Gray's iPad app The Elements; for the Japanese edition, a translated J-Pop version of the song was created.[9]