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My semester is coming to an end and final projects and exams are clawing at my face, so I haven’t been listening to as much new music. Instead I’ve been listening to soothing albums like Nick Drake’s Pink Moon on repeat while I pretend to do work.
I’ve loved Nick Drake ever since middle school, when I became strangely obsessed with people that committed suicide. Kurt Cobain, Sylvia Plath, and Nick Drake being my top 3 interests. I know. It’s weird. (Note: It is still debated whether or or not Drake’s death was a suicide. It’s generally accepted that it was.) I also found it intriguing that Nick Drake was so introverted that he didn’t do interviews and stopped performing live early in his career because he didn’t enjoy it. Something about an artist that wants nothing to do with a stage just seemed pure to me, like Nick Drake wrote these songs because he needed to, and he wanted to share them, but he wasn’t interested in putting on a show.
Drake suffered from very deep depression and insomnia and died in 1974 at age 26 from an overdose of his depression meds. He wasn’t well known until after his death, but since then he’s become somewhat of a romanticized folk icon. You really don’t need to know any of this to appreciate his music. His soft, haunting voice and beautiful melodies express it all.
Nick Drake – Things Behind The Sun | YouSendIt
Months before Heath Ledger died, he put out a video set to Nick Drake’s “Black Dog”.
Heath said: “I was obsessed with Drake’s story and his music and I pursued it for a while and I still have hopes to kind of tell his story one day. But it kind of died away, faded away, because I…He was a very mysterious figure and I felt like I would be taking too many liberties.”
Nick Drake – Black Eyed Dog | YouSendIt
