In the not too distant past, Volkswagen and the geniuses that manage its ad campaigns ran a television spot featuring a topless drive along the coast on a clear summer night as a carload of teenagers make their way to a party. They arrive and, without saying a word, consent to ditch the party in favor of driving, deciding they'd rather take in the starry sky.

The spot might not make sense if it weren't for a song playing lightly in the background, a song that mirrors almost indescribable thoughts that we've all had at one time or another.

The Volkswagen commercial, on one level, is akin to an anti-John the Baptist. Rather than preparing the way for the savior to come, the short commercial, musically, reveals what should have been.

And if there is any musician who deserved fame and never tasted it in his life, it's Nick Drake, the singer/songwriter who created the melody and words that play throughout the Volkswagen commercial.

The name of the song is "Pink Moon," the title track off of Drake's 1972 LP. His third and final studio effort after 1968's Five Leaves Left and 1970's Bryter Layter, Moon was recorded in two short days.

Drake's previous work, although critically acclaimed, failed to catch on with audiences and his albums sold poorly while his concerts were barely attended. Drake looked at his work as a failure and sunk deep into depression. It was in this state that he managed to turn out Pink Moon, which became his last record after he died of an antidepressant drug overdose in 1974.

The album has a unity almost impossible for many other artists to reach. Most of the tracks contain only Drake's magnificent guitar for instrumentation, with some occasional accompaniments, such as a beautiful piano melody stuck in the middle of the title track.

But key to the unison of the songs is Drake's soft, soulful voice, which defies simple definition. He certainly doesn't sound like a child but I would hesitate to call his voice grown-up; his quiet outbursts have an otherness to them that transcends the mold of ordinary categorization.

Many of the songs reveal Drake's disillusionment with the world, as in "Place to Be," in which he sings, "And I was green, greener than the hill . . . Now I'm darker than the deepest sea."

Others have Drake expressing his intense isolation, such as in "Parasite" or "Things Behind the Sun," in which he warns, "Please beware of them that stare."

While all the songs are obscure in their use of imagery and most, if not all, reveal at least a hint of sadness, many are simultaneously affirming.

And that's the great paradox of Pink Moon.

How can songs be so sad yet at the same time exude a warmth and contentment with being that is rarely expressed?

That seeming contradiction is one of the strongest appeals of the album.

That and the fact that the music makes you want to forget about that stupid party and just keep driving under a moonlight sky.