Smut

A funny song from 1965.
Words and music by Tom Lehrer.


The sheet music:


Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:


Lyrics

  1. Smut! Give me smut and nothing but!
    A dirty novel I can’t shut
    If it’s uncut, and unsubt- le
    I’ve never quibbled if it was ribald
    I would devour where others merely nibbled
    As the judge remarked the day that he
    Acquitted my Aunt Hortense, “To be smut
    It must be utterly without redeeming social importance.”
    Pornographic pictures I adore
    Indecent magazines galore
    I like them more if they’re hard core

Interlude
(Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties
Samplers, stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I’m still not satisfied!)
Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers
Lurid, licentious, and vile
Make me smile
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime
(Let’s face it, I love slime.)
All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder
For filth (I’m glad to say) is in
The mind of the beholder
When correctly viewed
Everything is lewd
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man!)

  1. I thrill to any book like Fanny Hill
    And I suppose I always will
    If it is swill and really filthy
    Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
    I’ve got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley
    But now they’re trying to take it all
    Away from us unless
    We take a stand, and hand in hand
    We fight for freedom of the press
    In other words
    Smut! (I love it)
    Ah, the adventures of a slut
    Oh, I’m a market they can’t glut
    I don’t know what
    Compares with smut
    Hip hip hooray!
    Let’s hear it for the Supreme Court!
    Don’t let them take it away!

Sung here by Tom Lehrer. Video by Vancha March: