There is no end to discovery in music.

I have been listening to Pink Moon by Nick Drake on repeat for about the last two hours. Just the one song, which is something I rarely do.

I watched The Lake House on TV last night, and it was featured in the soundtrack. And I remembered that it was in Volkswagen convertible commercials a long time ago. Maybe ten years ago? I had assumed at that time that it was a current song by a current commercial artist. You know, because Volkswagen and Mitsubishi had been using Crystal Method, Dirty Vegas and Propellerheads tracks. I won’t lie: I have purchased albums on the basis of television commercials.

But hearing it again made it fresh and I was determined this time to find it and download it.

It’s not on the soundtrack album for The Lake House. Fortunately, IMDB lists the songs in the movie, in what I’m guessing is order of appearance.

I made a lot of wrong guesses as to which song it might be, because I didn’t think through the lyrics as they related to the song title. And I assumed incorrectly the song was from the late 90s.

SO. If he was still alive, I would owe Nick Drake an apology. And I find myself wondering what the rest of his œuvre is like. Pink Moon is the title track of his third album, released in 1972. He didn’t live long enough to produce a fourth.

It’s a sweet, stripped down, two-minute song. Two guitars and a few notes on a piano, and a few lines of poetry repeated twice:

See also: Nick Drake Pink Moon 1972 Full Album