Five Leaves Left - Reception and Influence

Reception and Influence

Five Leaves Left was ranked 85th in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 280 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

NME (2 October 1993, p. 29) - Ranked #74 in NME's list of the 'Greatest Albums Of All Time.'

Q (November 1999, p. 162) - Included in Q's Best Folk Albums of All Time - "The pinnacle of a melancholy canon of work so distinctive that admirers can only speculate miserably on what might have been."

Entertainment Weekly (12 May 2000, p.24) - "On his ageless debut, everything - Drake's lispy voice and delicate guitar fingerpicking, arranger Robert Kirby's stately strings - feels shrouded in mist....Drake's most glorious miniatures." - Rating: A

Alternative Press (March 2001, p.88) - "With a voice paradoxically feather-light and grave, of the most beautiful and melancholy albums ever recorded."

Mojo (July 2000, p.99) - "Represents the first flourish of promise....God, how damn confident it all sounds. He knew how good he was."

Rate Your Music, a metadatabase which aggregates the votes and reviews of its users, ranks the album fifth in the folk genre, seventh for albums released in 1969, and 56th overall. It has scored an average rating of 4.20 out of 5, which was calculated from 5957 ratings.

"Five leaves left" is a reference to the old Rizla cigarette papers packet - which used to contain a printed note near the end saying "Only five leaves left". The album title could also be a reference to an O. Henry short story entitled "The Last Leaf".