One of These Things First
Nick Drake
This is the most melodically generous thing in Drake's catalog, and perhaps the most heartbreaking for that reason — because you can hear what he might have become. The piano introduction has an ease that his other recordings rarely allow, and the song builds through a series of what-might-have-beens, each one delivered without self-pity, which somehow makes the self-pity impossible to avoid. Drake's vocal performance here carries a lightness that reads as bittersweet rather than simply sad; he inhabits the possibilities he's describing rather than mourning them from a distance. The production — arranged by Robert Kirby, who Drake knew from Cambridge — frames the song with orchestral warmth that his later, starker recordings abandoned entirely. The song sits at a crossroads between folk, jazz, and chamber pop, belonging fully to none of them, which is its own kind of statement. You might reach for this one on a Sunday afternoon in late autumn, when the light is golden but already leaving, and you find yourself thinking about the versions of your life that didn't happen.
slow
1960s
warm, golden, bittersweet
British folk, Cambridge scene
Folk, Chamber Pop. Orchestral Folk. nostalgic, melancholic. Opens with rare melodic ease then unfolds as a series of unlived possibilities, the lightness making the sadness inescapable by the end. energy 3. slow. danceability 2. valence 4. vocals: light male folk, bittersweet, inhabiting rather than lamenting, melodic. production: piano, orchestral strings, warm chamber arrangement, Robert Kirby. texture: warm, golden, bittersweet. acousticness 7. era: 1960s. British folk, Cambridge scene. Sunday afternoon in late autumn when golden light is already leaving and you think about lives you didn't live