Now We Rise and We Are Everywhere

More than three decades ago, British folksinger Nick Drake gulped down a fatal handful of prescription antidepressants, overwhelming his tender, 26-year-old heart and prematurely concluding his career, which hadn’t been going well. Drake’s first three LPs were commercially insignificant and largely ignored by critics; it didn’t help that Drake despised touring and interviews. But since his death in 1974, his reputation has swelled to absurd proportions. Plenty of artists have garnered posthumous fame, but Drake’s second act— a 30-year renaissance that includes tribute albums, scads of celebrity endorsements, an acclaimed car commercial, two biographies, loads of reissues and compilations, placement in films and television shows, a handful of documentaries, an endless ring of websites, and constant, unmitigated canonization by the press—is remarkable by any standard.

In response to the continuing interest, Drake’s estate—run by his sister, Gabrielle, and a man named Cally Calloman—has not only reissued his entire discography on more than one occasion, but also unleashed a steady stream of hodge-podge anthologies (some more vital than others), satiating fan demand and ensuring that Drake remains an essential artist for anyone even remotely compelled by acoustic music.

It’s impossible to discern to what degree Drake’s death—an end that plenty consider poetic—has colored or guided his success; likewise, there’s no way of knowing whether Drake’s music would have been discovered and celebrated were his life not so easily mythologized. Earlier in 2007, the Drake estate released Family Tree, a 28-track collection of scratchy home recordings, including a duet with Gabrielle and two swooning piano songs written and performed by Drake’s mother, Molly. (It’s hard to listen to Molly purr the lyrics to “Poor Mum”— “Poor Mum / Nothing worked out in the way that you planned”—and not wince a bit at their prescience.)

Family Tree was preceded by five other posthumous releases: two collections of outtakes and rarities and three introductory greatest-hits compilations. And then there are Drake’s official albums, the ones he made while still alive. On Five Leaves Left (1969), recorded while he was a student at Cambridge University, Drake was backed by members of Fairport Convention. The album introduced listeners to his peculiar, impossible-to-replicate vocal style and open-tuned guitar. Its follow-up, 1970’s Bryter Layter, is Drake’s most lavish: Once again using members of Fairport Convention (and adding the Velvet Underground’s John Cale), Bryter Layter is packed with swooning strings and rapturous arrangements. Drake’s final record, 1972’s stark, stunning Pink Moon, features only the singer and his finger-picked guitar. (The record’s lone overdub—a short string of piano notes—appears on the title track.) Pink Moon is 28 minutes of bare, disconsolate folksongs; it’s Drake’s bleakest work, and also his most beloved.

This is an awfully complicated trail of plastic for an artist who only officially recorded 31 original songs in his short lifetime. So the question sticks: Why is Nick Drake so intensely adored now, three decades after his death? Why not in his lifetime? What changed for Drake, and when? Is there a crueler success story in all of pop-music history?