McKay. (Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)

I probably haven’t seen the worst cabaret act of all time, but after Nellie McKay at Feinstein’s, I have certainly seen the dopiest. Part naive, lyric-driven song parade and part ecology lecture on the rape of the environment, this curiosity is called Silent Spring—It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature and it features the cute, sincere and woefully misguided actress-singer in the role of late environmentalist author Rachel Carson, who devoted her career to saving the planet from arrogant self-destruction. Ms. McKay is a gentle activist who loves dogs and flowers and everything green, attaching a few songs about nature to a rambling discourse about the dangers of pesticides, insecticides and other acrimonious environmental assaults. (It’s not a show you want to see on Valentine’s Day.) The musical interludes do little to alleviate the academic tedium generated by the disorganized patter wedged between them. One or two critics I respect have high regard for this girl, but all I can see is a vast need for improvement. Her heart may be in the right place, but frankly, this corny little act, which she has constructed from crêpe paper and good intentions, is something of a mess.

The prize-winning books and essays by Carson, like Silent Spring and The Sea Around Us, are talismans to savor with results that resound today. (Among other accomplishments, the author was responsible for the government’s banning DDT from farm crops.) To her credit, Ms. McKay eschews preachiness for a more subtle, singable approach to life’s lessons. After an offstage chorus of “Every Little Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own,” she enters with her musicians, stomping among the tables to the tune of Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin’s “Make Way for Tomorrow” with teenage abandon, draped in graduation caps and gowns like alumni of Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge, replete with the idiocy of singer Ish Kabibble. The act eases its way down from there into a pool of ultimate silliness. Four tone-deaf musicians in straw hats shout comments like “Next stop  is Union Station!” while Ms. McKay dances with a biology lab microscope. Sometimes she answers the phone and in exasperation tries to deal with publishers, scientists and the annoying press longing for one of her pithy quotes. (“Hi, Rachel, this is William Shawn of the New Yorker calling!”) In keeping with the Carson conservationist theme, she gazes through a pair of oversize binoculars like Harold Lloyd. Then she pecks away on a portable typewriter while the audience waits for something to happen. A disastrous portion of her act is a pathetic, misguided attempt to milk sophomoric humor out of a literary phenomenon, with songs chosen to illustrate what the world has done to pollute the ozone. Well-intentioned and fearless, she’s a brave and bonnie little morsel attempting to inject something new and fresh into the calcified cabaret scene. Most of the time, her ideas backfire.

The full spectrum of Carson’s passion and its impact on future generations is merely a wedge issue used to string together a series of disconnected tunes. Some of them are wonderful. There’s a jazz instrumental by Charles Mingus, a touch of Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do” and a raspy socked-out bellow of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It.” How any of this enhances Carson’s work is anybody’s guess. Ms. McKay’s own compositions, like “Gonna Be a Bureaucrat,” are senseless curios with no defining musical characteristics. A horror called “Food” endlessly repeats the line “We’re gonna get some food in the house tonight—gonna get some food on the table!” while the four musicians feign falling asleep and snoring loudly. Something called “Old Love” plants lyrics in the air that fall with bewilderment on the baffled listeners: “I want an old love … don’t want a new love … a crimson and cold love … just like you!” Say what? “All this needs,” whispered a man at the next table, “is a banjo.” And then there they were—two of them, to be exact. Not to mention a dreaded ukulele, which should never be seen or heard this side of a Harvard-Princeton game. The show is called Silent Spring, so why doesn’t she sing the great Harold Arlen song of the same title, which says so much more about the darkness of the earth at noon than everything in this entire enterprise put together? The phone rings again. “Well,” she says in Carson’s voice, “I’ve been hearing a lot about these pesticides since the war!” You don’t know whether to laugh or wince. She often talks to people named Dorothy and Roger without identifying them. Were they people in Carson’s life? Does anybody care? A great portion of the time, she seems to be talking to herself, and when she gives an alarming report on the terminal lumps in her breast, it would be better if she didn’t talk at all. On the way out, an irate woman said, “You have to be on crystal meth to get through something this bad.”

Songs thrown together in a Cuisinart, splashing all over the stage, convey the beauty of natural wonder before it was abated by politicians, wrecking crews and petroleum tanks: “Early Autumn,” “Midnight Sun,” etc. They are wonderful selections, but her Little Lulu voice from the Stacey Kent-Maude Maggart School of Vocal Diminishment serves them badly. On Dave Frishberg’s soft anthem “Listen Here,” she sings the wrong notes. After “It’s So Peaceful in the Country,” I have finally heard Alec Wilder’s masterpiece performed like Spike Jones and the City Slickers. And what, I ask humbly, without rancor, is the meaning of an acceptance speech for the Albert Schweitzer Award for the Advancement of Animal Welfare, followed by “The Gentleman Is a Dope”? The whole thing is so confused you don’t know what’s going on half the time. Don’t even ask how “Ten Cents a Dance” fits in. She promises the audience to give out free condoms at the end of the show that are “tender” and “biodegradable.” I heard one shriek and a few gasps, but no laughs. Sophomoric patter only dilutes the impact of the points she aims to get across in the song lyrics. Faulty intonation, an errant sense of rhythm and occasionally singing out of tune don’t help. Everything seems to exist for the sake of a gimmick. It remains to be proved if she can anchor a quirky style to so much corn and make it work over a prolonged period of time.

As offbeat as she is, I can only wonder about the future of Nellie McKay. I think she will get better. She is smart. She is also sloppy and self-indulgent. The death of the Oak Room leaves the Café Carlyle and Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency as the only two major hotel rooms in town. You now have to earn the right to play both. Ms. McKay isn’t there yet. The crowds punishing the parquet and the Parkay at prices equivalent to a Park Avenue mortgage payment demand more than just another precocious girl who stands center stage in a swanky club singing Hoagy Carmichael’s charming “Lazy Bones,” followed by a discussion of breast cancer. Some of the songs are first-rate, but she sings them all wrong.

rreed@observer.com

Nellie McKay (Getty Images)

National Council Grand Finals Concert (Metropolitan Opera, March 18)

The National Council Auditions are classical music’s best reality show—not least because the judges have real power, the contestants have real talent, and the winners get a real prize. And not just some cash and a Pepsi commercial—we’re talking about getting discovered and fostered by the Met. Former auditionees at this annual aria-off include Renée Fleming, Eric Owens, and Deborah Voigt. This year’s finalists will be accompanied by the  Met’s orchestra, then toasted with Champagne, though they likely prefer Throat Coat tea.

Nellie McKay’s “Silent Spring: It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature” (Feinstein’s at Loews Regency, Begins March 20)

With her splashy debut double-album, 2004’s Get Away From Me, Nellie McKay declared herself  America’s top theater-kid—brash, big-voiced, and unafraid to be obnoxious. She never hit superstardom, likely because she narrowly missed the music-blog-dominated web and the Glee era, but she’s been building an interestingly multifaceted career that includes Times Book Review scribblings, Brecht roles onstage and animal-rights activism (she’s used that big voice to protest primate testing and carriage horses). She comes to Feinstein’s to bring across her rich vocalization and a personality that is petulant and righteous in equal measures.

Birth of Electronic Music (Miller Theatre, April 10)

Columbia University’s Miller Theatre continues its series of free “pop-up concerts” with a program that expands the music academy’s purview into the present day. Parisian conductor Jean-Baptiste Barrière, formerly of the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) at Paris’s Centre Pompidou, has put together a program of clicks, buzzes, and whirrs that will shock anyone for whom Philip Glass is a risky proposition—and likely sound at least a little familiar to anyone who’s followed the ever-more-electronic trends in popular music. What better way to usher in the age of Skrillex and his celebrity-DJ ilk than to welcome computerized music into the hallowed halls of academia? This time next year, we’ll be practicing to get to Carnegie HAL.

Billy Budd (Metropolitan Opera, Begins May 4)

How do you get even more homoeroticism into the performing arts? Benjamin Britten cracked the code in the late 1940s by making an opera of Herman Melville’s other sailing epic. The Met has hung a “No Sopranos Allowed” sign on the clubhouse for the night as they celebrate the strength and charisma of naval officers. This stalwart crew includes the opera world’s hunky top Gunn, the swoon-worthy Nathan Gunn, as Billy himself.

Siegfried (Metropolitan Opera, April 21)

The Met’s Ring cycle nears its suitably epic conclusion with Deborah Voigt singing Brünnhilde in a five-hour, thirty-minute aria-thon. Jay Hunter Morris, who’s heretofore spent his career in the understudy’s sweat-soaked chair, is playing Siegfried. After leaping to the production’s rescue last summer at the San Francisco Opera. He has at last, and deservedly, hit the big time. And now he’s in the hot seat, as this portion of the cycle focuses on Siegfried’s journey through the enchanted forest. Look for stage designer Robert Lepage, known for his innovative video images and rotating elements, to pull out all the stops for this one.

Lisa Batiashvili Plays Mozart (New York Philharmonic, April 26)

The nation of Georgia’s top export continues to justify her ticket prices and her place in the stratosphere of the musical hierarchy with a three-night engagement at Carnegie Hall—one she earned through practice (soloist at the world premiere of a Magnus Lindberg violin concerto in 2006), practice (playing the 1709 Engleman Stradivarius, on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation), and more practice (touring as part of a super-chamber quartet and performing festivals from Tanglewood to Edinburgh). For Carnegie Hall, Ms. Batiashvili has been cut loose from her quartet and is able to debut a Marc Neikrug concerto for orchestra, and lead Alan Gilbert’s orchestra in compositions by Debussy, Mozart, and Berlioz.

The Makropulos Case (Metropolitan Opera, April 27)

Janacek’s penultimate opera makes a big splash at the Met with Finnish soprano Karita Mattila singing the part of Emilia. Within the opera, Emilia is known for being a talented singer—both allowing for some suspension of disbelief as to why she’s singing all the time and raising the bar for how good her singing must be relative to the rest of the cast. Happily, Ms. Mattila is up to the task, thanks to a long career during which she’s appeared regularly the world over, playing parts ranging from Mozart’s Donna Elvira to Tchaikovsky’s Tatyana to Strauss’s Salome.

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and a Lindberg World Premiere (New York Philharmonic, May 3)

If you’re lucky enough to have a world-renowned composer as your composer-in-residence, you make him compose, and the fruits of Magnus Lindberg’s work for the New York Philharmonic will at last have their debut. Mr. Lindberg’s Piano Concerto No. 2—following his 1990-94 first concerto—features Yefim Bronfman as the lucky soloist, in a set also featuring Dvorak’s Carnival Overture and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, his work devoted to fate and his wealthy patroness. The times in which the wealthy would individually commission works of musical art for their own delectation seem so far away; now it’s left to institutions.

Orpheus (City Opera, Begins May 12)

Georg Philipp Telemann’s Orpheus, unlike traditional versions of the Underworld myth, is narrated from the perspective of the Orasia, the love-besotted Queen of Thrace who dooms Orpheus and his lissome bride. It’s like Star Wars told from a viewpoint sympathetic to Darth Vader, and it’s utterly of a piece with the innovations for which City Opera is known. Fear not, justice-hungry opera-goers: Orasia gets hers in the end, but not until after Orpheus’s ever-wrenching descent into hell in failed pursuit of his bride. If you go to City Opera this season, go for the opera that subverts convention.

Lea Salonga: The Journey Continues … (May 4)

The Tony-winning Miss Saigon star has gone through a couple more career reinventions— 20-somethings may know her as a pre-Pixar Disney princess, lending her voice to Mulan, and cabaret fans can discover her singing Broadway and standards for one night only, as well as sharing personal anecdotes from her lengthy career. She was a prodigy, recording her debut album, Small Voice, at age 10, and she was named a “Disney Legend” by the Walt Disney company last year. She also opened for Menudo on their mid-1980s world tour. Now we just need to think of the standards that match such a colorful life …

It was a Sunday afternoon in May, and Ms. McKay, who is 19, strawberry-blond, button-nosed, dewdrop-lipped, and a startlingly precocious singer-songwriter you should hear from soon, was walking along the bridle path in Central Park. She wore a crisp pink overcoat, shiny black shoes and a red bow in the back of her hair, and she was talking exuberantly of Making It Big, in the way talented young people used to talk about Making It Big before, somewhere along the way, it became sadly uncool to do so.

"I used to run for office in high school just so I could see my name on the wall," she said. "It's wonderful to be noticed and have people like you, have people like you without even knowing you. I love that. You look at Don't Look Back and Dylan seems bored by it, but I-well, it's only been a few months. I love it, I love it, I love it."

It really has been only a few months. Singer-songwriters often spend years trekking around before anyone bothers to notice, but Ms. McKay (it's pronounced "Mi-KAI") appears to have plopped down from the clouds. Six months ago, nobody knew much of anything about her. But after a string of performances at places like the Sidewalk Café, an out-of-nowhere win at a songwriting competition, a hastily produced CD and a flattering write-up in Time Out New York , the chattering began. The other night, she played Joe's Pub, and though Ms. McKay was merely the opening act-taking the stage at the early-bird buffet hour of 7 p.m.-the room was as electric as a Saturday at midnight. Her mom, Robin Pappas, was there; her manager, Lach, was there; her growing coterie of fans was there; and the record-label suits were there, too-they, like everybody else, had been told about this girl they had, had, had to see, who looked like a 1940's movie star, banged the piano like a whirlybird, sang like Doris Day and penned couplets as divine as Cole Porter's.

And, that night, Ms. McKay wore a red dress like you're supposed to wear a red dress, and she was just-exciting. It's awfully easy to be cynical about the New York music scene these days, with its multiple pretenders and poseurs and the shaggy-haired rock crits jerkin' their Gherkins to the latest Stooges imitation, but Ms. McKay was not at all like that or them. She'd stepped out of a different orbit-she'd hardly listened to records made after Some Like It Hot was released-and yet she was no nostalgia act; she was as contemporary and connected as anyone, singing about the war and 'N Sync, for goodness' sake, and she was just ridiculously young. She was younger than Britney and Christina, and she wrote preternatural songs with titles like "I Wanna Get Married," with lyrics like:

I want to get married

I need to cook meals

I want to pack cute little lunches

For my Brady Bunches

Then read Danielle Steele

I want to partake

In bake sales for the classroom

I want to hear the sweet tune

Of Sally's little vroom-vroom

As she zooms around my broom

As I exhume the gloom

Of my shallow life.

"Oops, I Did it Again" it wasn't. She'd sung that song late last year at the Sidewalk, and you could have heard a sugar grain plunk into a cappuccino.

"I was just like, 'Come on!'" said Lach, who books the room. "That rhyme scheme-' zooms around my broom as I exhume the gloom ' and ending with ' my shallow life '-that's up there with McCartney and Costello as far as melodic lines. Or the Gershwins. And I'm like, 'Is she putting me on? Is she a 40-year-old midget?' No one's got this much. It's like she's out of the 40's or something. It's like Myrna Loy walked in."

Not long after, Lach signed on as Ms. McKay's manager, and he'd set about trying to make as many people as possible know who she was. The Joe's Pub show, on April 30, was her biggest yet, and the usually unflappable Ms. McKay confessed that she was nervous, even terrified, beforehand. "I couldn't talk to anybody," she said. "I went to the Starbucks and I almost missed my time to go on. And I'm a girl, so half of me was thinking about my hair."

The show-and the hair-went splendidly, however, and now the labels were calling all the time, offering money, studios, producers and the promise of the only thing Ms. McKay was really after: fame. Born in London to an actress and a director who split soon after-"England was too small for the both of them," she said-young Nellie moved to America with her mother and undertook an artist's daughter odyssey that began in Harlem ("I was a very weird kid"), crossed the country in a crowded VW Beetle bus ("We had nine cats and a dog") to Olympia, Wash. ("Wasn't very artsy") before finally returning East-to the Poconos, of all places. She rebelled against her mother's Dylan and Leadbelly records by listening to Eydie Gorme and Doris Day and the "whitest of white singers." But Mama, who'd graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and played parts in Chariots of Fire and Superman II , encouraged Nellie, made sure she had a piano to play, kept her surrounded by musicians and artists and influencers-in Harlem, she rented a room to everyone from a "gay opera singer from El Paso" to a "folk singer who was a closet Republican," she said-and, even early on, the kid wanted to be a star.

"Nellie is 10 times more talented than I ever was-and very smart," Robin Pappas said. "She knows what's got to be done to get ahead in this business. She's not afraid to dye her hair or wear red. Without being bogus, she pulls it off."

Still, as much as young Nellie wanted to be famous, she wasn't so sure how she'd get there. She'd gone to the Manhattan School of Music and studied jazz voice for a couple of years, then dropped out. ("I didn't feel like eating Chinese food and talking the shit all day. I always wanted to go out and be auditioning for something and making it," she said.) She'd gone out for acting roles and even dabbled in stand-up comedy. But she kept returning to music. It was probably inevitable; it was what she did best.

"When I was in sixth grade, instead of doing 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On', I did 'Whole Lot of Learnin' Goin' On'-I was like, ' This school's burnin'! Whole lotta learnin' goin' on! '-and I'd be kicking the piano, playing, playing, playing, and everyone would be there, smacking their gum-this was in Olympia-and I was like, 'Don't you guys get it? I'm a star !'" Ms. McKay said. "But I wasn't; I was just this geeky little four-eyes."

But now she's on the verge. There's a documentary film crew following Ms. McKay around; they want to make a Star Is Born kind of thing. She and Lach are trying to figure out which label to sign with. She gets compared to the obvious people-Norah Jones, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Diana Krall, Vanessa Carlton ("The chicks with pianos," she said)-but she is trying to cut her own path. She wants to be a pop star-even if, as she admits, the pop songs she writes "come out like something from 1937." She's undoubtedly capable of achieving niche fame, but she wants the whole deal: the cover-of-magazine fame, the buy-Mama-a-house fame. "A house?" Robin Pappas said. "It was a pink castle a couple of weeks ago."

And she's such a talent and so sure of herself that you won't bet against her. Ms. McKay's certainty isn't arrogance-at least it's not the unattractive kind of arrogance. It's the winning, old-time confidence you're supposed to have if you want to be a star, and you're 19 years old and wanted by everyone, and strangers who walk past you in Central Park stop and stare like they know you, even if they don't. Yet.

"I think it's such a shame when people are taken by surprise by fame," Nellie McKay said. "I just think they should quit then, and leave the playing field open for me. Because I really want it."

-Jason Gay