10 Amazing Albums Turning 50 In 2022
2. Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Nick Drake’s artistry was on display from the off, but his all-too-brief life and career was capped off with his finest album. Pink Moon is a spare, brilliant collection of songs that reflects the fragile state of the singer like few albums can.
Drake was in a dark place here, but he has no interest in dwelling in one-note sorrow. On the title track he sounds weary and almost breathless, but doesn’t let that stop him from making something beautiful and bucolic, complete with a simple, plaintive piano line, one of the few times the album pushes beyond guitar and voice.
It’s not all as pretty as this, though: “Know” is oblique even by Drake’s standards, a despairing track based around a thin lyric; "Which Will" is spooky and wispy, painting a picture of a confused and searching individual.
Things end on a more positive note with the hopeful, even positive “From The Morning”, but tragically, Drake would be gone two years later. In his brief but near flawless catalogue, this album shines the brightest.