If you were to try and explain the mysterious and mythical legacy of ’70s singer-songwriter Nick Drake to someone who’d never heard of him, it might be helpful to bring up Van Gogh. Like Van Gogh, Drake didn’t have much success when he was alive. But years after his death at the age of just 26, he’s hailed as a genius. Artists from the Cure to R.E.M. to Kate Bush to Radiohead to Aimee Mann have cited him as a major influence. So why didn’t he make it big during his lifetime?
Like Van Gogh, Drake struggled with his mental health. He still managed to make three albums — Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, and Pink Moon — though none of them sold well. He was just 19 when he started recording Five Leaves Left and had only been playing guitar for a few years at the time, according to Stereogum. Even so, as Chris Jones of the BBC wrote in a 2007 retrospective review of the 1969 album, “it’s hard not to be still floored by the beauty of his first album.”
“Widely ignored upon its release, with hindsight it’s easy to see how such ignorance conspired to make Drake a bitter man,” Jones continued. “Yet ultimately all we can do is bask in the unique vision captured here and be grateful that, for a short period, Nick Drake was able to share it with us all.”
Drake’s next album, Bryter Layter, was released in 1971. Featuring members of Fairport Convention and John Cale accompanying Drake, this sophomore effort wasn’t a commercial success either. Critics, however, were (and remained) impressed.
“Nick Drake may be the most ethereal recording artist I’ve ever heard,” Rolling Stone‘s Stephen Demorest wrote in 1977. “His fleeting career — the moody, mysterious music, the remote relationship with his record company — seemed calculated to distance him from reality. Yet his hushed songs touch a rare tranquility that approaches poetry.”
“Drake’s melodies are seldom less than enchanting,” Demorest continued. “Built around acoustic folk-jazz guitar figures and muffled percussion, they become emotionally charged when shaded by arranger Robert Kirby’s poignant, eddying strings. Drake’s impressionistic lyrics are vivid but provocatively sketchy, making them as curiously personal as phrases mumbled in sleep. They’re delivered in an airy, nearly unconscious whisper that blends as naturally into the arrangements as a breeze rippling through tall grass.”
Drake’s third album, Pink Moon, was a more stripped-down affair, with just Drake on vocals and acoustic guitar (and the piano melody on the title track, which was an overdub). Released in 1972, it was yet another commercial disappointment, remembered today as a work of incredible significance.
In 2025, Gavyn Green of Paste called Pink Moon Drake’s “final masterpiece, a deserted isle of shy lyricism and haunting acoustic work that sheds all pretense of fame, form, and, heartbreakingly, life itself.”
“Pink Moon — both the album and the song — plays like an extended metaphor for Nick Drake’s internal reckoning,” Green continued. “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.”
It was “Pink Moon,” the song, that gave Drake his biggest exposure when Volkswagen used it in a popular ad campaign titled “Milky Way.” Unfortunately, this recognition came long after his death in 1974 from an overdose of antidepressants.
“The 1999 Volkswagen advert is 60 seconds long but nearly a quarter of a century later, viewers are still posting online about its profound impact, not because of the stylish visuals but because of the haunting music accompanying them: Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon,'” wrote Neil Armstrong for the BBC in 2023.
Since then, appreciation for Drake’s talent has continued to grow. His music has appeared in everything from movies like Practical Magic and The Royal Tenenbaums, TV shows, and more commercials. There have been tribute concerts and albums, documentaries, books, and countless social media posts in his honor. A California craft brewery even named a beer after one of his songs.
Drake’s life was far too short, but his legacy will live on forever.
Related: Beloved Singer-Songwriter, Compared to Carole King and Joni Mitchell, Was ‘All But Forgotten’ Until 26 Years After Her Death
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