Laurie Berkner: The Devil Inside

"She's like the Beatles," my friend E. says. "Only better."

He's joking, of course, but he's also confessing: Laurie Berkner is the one "children's musician" he enjoys even when his two-year-old son is not around. Other parents I've spoken to have expressed similar sentiments; among fertile young Americans, Berkner seems to be a widespread guilty pleasure.

Having listened carefully and repeatedly to her albums over the last couple weeks myself (may my fiancee forgive me), I've come to understand both the parents' love of Berkner, and the discomfort that makes them joke about her.

On the one hand, she sings beautifully, her songs are catchy, and her lyrics often have a special meaning for adults. ("Doodlebugs," for example, is in part a shout-out to Seinfeld.)

On the other, she's singing about dinosaurs--she sings the alphabet song--can grownups listen to this stuff and maintain their dignity?

A possible solution to this conundrum struck me when I discovered, through the song "Telephone," that while Berkner may have a song in her tummy, she also has demons in her heart. Among her recurring themes are death, shame, alienation, and above all loneliness; and Berkner's countless imaginary/animal friends can't always dull the pain.

One song is pointedly titled "I Had a Friend": while two of these friends are obviously dead (Janis, Jimi), a third "dances alone" and the last "waves goodbye." "What Falls in the Fall" is a Kindertotenlied for the twenty-first century (although it was written in the twentieth). In "I'm a Little Snowflake" Berkner quietly "melt[s] away," and in "I'm Going to Catch You" death drives her from gluttony to hypochondria to a whole week's worth of failed escapes.

Then there's "Telephone," which I've already mentioned. She calls someone (a friend? an ex-husband? a dead relative?), but no one answers. She visits, but "nobody's there." The person shows up only in her dream, and here comes the tragic twist: instantly Berkner can't wait to be rid of this person. "Telephone" is an authentic loner's lament; when a connection with another person is finally established, it proves to be illusory or dissatisfying.

For me her saddest song is "Magic Box." Here she purports to celebrate her imagination as an effective defense against the wicked world, but the affirmation comes off as obviously, and perhaps deliberately, unconvincing. She declares "I can fly higher than everything," but I always hear "I can't fly higher than everything": singing one line but conveying its opposite, Berkner manages a uniquely Jewish expression of sadness.

Hailing her now as the Isaac Babel of children's songs, I can wear my Laurie Berkner T-shirt with my manhood intact.

(My friend S. suggested that "Pig on Her Head" reveals a bipolar personality, or perhaps a severe case of seasonal affective disorder [SAD]; I was sorry to learn that S. was not being serious.)