“Northern Sky” by Nick Drake

"Northern Sky" is the song on Nick Drake's 1971 album Bryter Layter where the fog lifts. Drake, painfully shy and withdrawn, had struck up a friendship with producer Joe Boyd, who heard a hit hiding in the bare acoustic demo and called in John Cale, late of the Velvet Underground. Cale laid piano, organ and celesta over it, at first against Drake's wishes, with Dave Pegg on bass and Mike Kowalski on drums.

Drake came round, liked what he heard and figured this was his breakthrough. It wasn't: Island never put it out as a single, the album got no promotional push and sank, and his next move was the stark, stripped-back Pink Moon. The song only found its people in the 1980s, when it played a central part in reviving records that had been all but forgotten, and biographer Patrick Humphries rates it the finest thing Drake ever put his name to.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.