Time Capsule: Nick Drake, 'Pink Moon'

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Why is it that the most brilliant voices in music get snuffed out right as they reach their peak? Just imagine a post-Band of Gypsys Jimi Hendrix diving deeper into psychedelia and exploring funk throughout the 1970s, or picture the landscape of modern music had Kurt Cobain stuck around and the band continued to evolve after In Utero. But instead, we mythologize these artists at the height of their careers, encasing them in prophetic amber before time can dull their glow. There’s an unshakeable (and arguably toxic) romance between an early death and artistic immortality—a superstition sanctified by the morbid exclusivity of the 27 Club. Maybe that superstition began “the day the music died,” when a plane crash in 1959 killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. Maybe it goes back even further, to Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads. Or maybe it’s a coping mechanism—a cultural sleight of hand to distract us from the uglier truth: that artists depart from us slowly, oft-forgotten by an industry that thrives on what’s marketable, not meaningful.

And then there’s Nick Drake. Drake wasn’t the voice of a generation; in fact, he barely garnered an audience at all. Of the three albums he released in his lifetime: Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1971), and Pink Moon (1972), all were met with a shrug of apathy. Critics gave polite nods but never craved more. Listeners rifled right by his LP sleeves, so sales were dismal at best. As a result, Drake rarely performed live (he was rarely seen in public at all, really), and in 1974, at the age of 26, he died after overdosing on antidepressants. No legend, no blaze—just unceremonious silence. And, for decades, that’s how it stayed. Drake was forgotten by music, by culture, and by legacy, written into the footnotes of music history. A few musicians loved him in the ‘90s, especially Elliott Smith, Chris Cornell, Thom Yorke. However, in 1999, something unexpected happened: A Volkswagen commercial aired, and the Pink Moon title track played behind scenes of a quiet night drive. Suddenly, something clicked: album sales soared, reissues followed, and the world was finally ready for Drake’s artistry, a quarter of a century after his passing.

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In Nick Drake’s short discography, Pink Moon was his parting breath. It’s a faint and final masterpiece—a deserted isle of shy lyricism and haunting acoustic work that sheds all pretense of fame, form, and, heartbreakingly, life itself. Recorded in just two nights, the album captures Drake alone with his acoustic guitar, performing each track in a single take. The only exception is “Pink Moon” itself, which features a delicate piano overdub halfway through the intro. Moments where Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter were ornamented with string passages and lively jazz horns are left bare on Pink Moon, instead looping in fingerpicks and ghostly silences.

When the finished tapes arrived at Island Records, they came without liner notes, photos, or promotional material of any kind—as if Drake had already accepted the album’s fate to be quietly shelved, just like its creator. The footprint of Nick Drake, to me, feels Edgar Allen Poe-ish, not through any shared poetic brooding (though, there is plenty), but through their mutual tragedy. Both artists were geniuses of their time but largely ignored in life, only to be revered after death. Whether they saw themselves as failures or simply couldn’t reconcile their brilliance with the world’s indifference, the result was the same: early exits, posthumous praise, and a looming sense of what could have been.

Pink Moon—both the album and the song—plays like an extended metaphor for Nick Drake’s internal reckoning. It’s a gentle yet devastating exploration of inevitability. He sings on the title track, “I saw it written and I saw it say / Pink moon is on its way / And none of you stand so tall / Pink moon gonna get you all.” The “pink moon” embodies Drake’s sense of inevitability. Unbothered by wealth, morality, and stature—it comes for everyone all the same. There’s a preacher-like finality to his tone that’s prescient—apocalyptic even—but veiled in vulnerability. You can hear it in the hollow tremble of his voice, the way his picking lingers just a little too long on the strings after certain phrases, confronting his mortality and conceding to it.

“Place to Be” is, arguably, his best work and, in my opinion, one of the most vividly human songs ever written. It’s a portrait of change and collapse—Nick Drake standing on the ledge between innocence and experience, fighting to maintain a grip on himself as time pulls him under. The song plays out like his personal ledger, each verse a chapter of his experience in life. He begins with youthful certainty, full of hope and direction, but his depression ultimately grinds him down, eroding his strength and confidence until he’s left weak and longing for a place to simply “be.” Some consider “Place to Be” a nostalgic song, but I’ve never interpreted it that way. Nostalgia suggests sweetness, wishing for the “good ol’ days,” but Drake doesn’t want to return to a time where he was blind to reality. He doesn’t want to return to any time at all. Here, he isn’t reminiscing; he’s reckoning. There’s no plea for pity, no self-indulgent folklore. Drake recounts his life in broad panorama, painting strokes of sunny greens, pale blues and dark oceans to create a beautifully desolate picture of his life.

Pink Moon may initially sound like one man’s slow unraveling—but threaded through the album is a spectrum of emotion cleverly parsed out in each brief, fleeting composition. “Road” is openly defiant and argumentative. Drake insists that, to him, the moon shines clearer than the sun, and that forging his own path—albeit a lonelier, less successful one—is worth more than walking along someone else’s. The guitar on “Which Will” dances back and forth while Drake asks questions about the deepness of love—questions he leaves hanging in the air both unanswered and unanswerable.

Meanwhile, “Things Behind the Sun” offers the record’s most lyrically intricate moment, as Drake warns against those that take pleasure in superiority. He offers a way to cope by finding peace in identity, and the opening verse is equally wary and wounding: “Please beware of them that stare / They’ll only smile to see you while / your time away / And once you’ve seen what they have been / To win the earth just won’t seem worth / your night or your day / Who’ll hear what I say?” It’s a pivotal moment for Drake, an outward criticism on an album wrought with self-deprecation. However, “Parasite” trains its focus on the songwriter once more. Here, he names himself plainly as an unwanted presence, a burden—a parasite that hangs around, following, watching, and waiting.

The polarity of Pink Moon, though, is that Nick Drake makes all of these songs sound just like a lullaby. His voice is soothing and gentle, and he never strays from that calm, meandering intonation even for a minute. Still, it’s a near-impossible record to listen to passively, because there is truly nothing to hear but Drake and his guitar. Pink Moon is devoid of life, yet it’s alluringly luminous, minimal but never fully empty. The songs are short and unadorned (any extra detail would weigh them down, in my opinion), and his signature open-tunings shimmer like distant stars against a deep, blank sky. Drake is the man in the moon—no band, no accompanying instrumentation—just him and his words, utterly alone. And yet, Pink Moon doesn’t end in anguish or despair. It ends on “From the Morning,” an unobscured moment of joy that beckons in the new day and puts the night to rest. Drake softly sings, “A day once dawned / And it was beautiful / And now we rise / And we are everywhere / And she flies / She is everywhere / See she flies all around,” and there’s finally a hint of contentment in his voice—perhaps even a smile on his face, happy that he left with visions of a clement sun and not what watches over us in the darkness.

Time Capsule: Nick Drake, Pink Moon

In Nick Drake’s short discography, Pink Moon lingers as his parting breath. It's a faint and final masterpiece—a deserted isle of shy lyricism and haunting acoustic work that sheds all pretense of fame, form, and, heartbreakingly, even life itself.