We Will All Go Together When We Go

""We Will All Go Together When We Go" is a blackly humorous song by Tom Lehrer about the possible annihilation of the entire human race due to a nuclear exchange. It first appeared on the live album "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer", released in 1959.

Lehrer would revisit the nuclear annihilation theme in "So Long Mom", from the 1965 album "That Was the Year That Was".

The song begins by pondering about the nature of mortality, with extreme sort of enjambment:

When you attend a funeral
It is sad to think that sooner 'r l-
ater those you love will do the same for you.
And you may have thought it tragic,
Not to mention other adjec-
Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do - but don't you worry -

No more ashes, no more sackcloth,
And an armband made of black cloth
Will someday never more adorn a sleeve.
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbours too,
There'll be nobody left behind to grieve.

After this, the song goes into an upbeat tune about the end of humanity, with lyrics such as:

We will all go together when we go,
All suffused with an incandescent glow.

The lyrics make reference to various professions and their (brief) responses to such an event, including lawyers and the international insurance market Lloyd's of London.

Near the end is a short bridge, almost every syllable in the same note of the scale:

You will all go to your respective Valhallas
Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect $200!

ee also

*"Christmas at Ground Zero", a song in a similar vein by "Weird Al" Yankovic

External links

* [http://youtube.com/6funswede Tom Lehrer performing twelve songs in the 1960's]