“Pink Moon” by Nick Drake

"Pink Moon" is the title song of Nick Drake's third and last studio album, which Island released in Britain on 25 February 1972, and it's about as naked as a record gets. There's no band on it, just Drake's voice and acoustic guitar, plus the one extra touch on the whole album: a piano melody he overdubbed onto this very track, glinting through the strumming like a streetlamp through fog.

John Wood produced and engineered it, and the sound is so close and hushed that Drake's murmur seems to sit right at your shoulder. Drake wrote the words and music alone. Of his three studio albums, Pink Moon was the only one issued in North America while he lived.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.