Northern Sky

John Cale was producing Nico's Desertshore with Joe Boyd at Sound Techniques when he heard Drake's demos and demanded to meet him. He went straight to Drake's flat in Hampstead, and two days later arrived at the studio having ordered a Hammond organ and a celeste; he improvised the keyboard parts on Northern Sky and wrote its middle eight. Dave Pegg played bass and Mike Kowalski drums. Boyd said his real contribution was introducing the two. Beverley Martyn believed Drake wrote it while staying with her and John Martyn in Hastings, where a tree stood across the pavement and the full moon lay on the sea.

Peter Paphides called it the most unabashedly joyful song he wrote, and NME the greatest English love song of modern times. Who it is about is unknown. Robert Kirby thought it could have been a single, but Island never released one. Drake never played it live. It closes the film Serendipity, whose soundtrack is the source of the upload in the hypersongs web, and the Dream Academy's Life in a Northern Town grew out of it.