Nick Drake

Nick Drake was the quintessential fragile genius. His late-1960s and early-'70s albums combine pastoral, very British romanticism with a jazzy folk lilt that owes a debt to Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin. His hypnotic whisper of a voice and his virtuosic fingerpicking were the perfect emissaries for Drake's songs of quiet longing and displacement. Though he was virtually unknown during his too-short life, he would posthumously inspire a subsequent generation of artists.