Chris Rea, an English singer-songwriter and guitarist greatest identified for his festive hit Driving Residence For Christmas, has died aged 74 following a brief sickness, his household mentioned on Monday (Dec 22).
Hailing from Middlesbrough, a port city in northeast England, Rea’s track Idiot (If You Suppose It is Over) from his debut studio album in 1978 was his greatest chart hit, reaching the US billboard Sizzling 100 and incomes him a Grammy nomination.
He launched 25 studio albums and bought greater than 40 million information worldwide in a profession spanning 5 a long time, cementing his popularity as one among Britain’s most distinguished pop artists.
Driving Residence For Christmas, written throughout a snowy journey when he was unemployed and launched in 1986, turned a seasonal staple in Britain, re-entering UK charts yearly and that includes in festive promoting campaigns.
“My supervisor had simply left me, I would just been banned from driving, my now spouse, Joan, she needed to drive right down to London, decide me up within the mini and take me residence, and that is once I wrote it,” Rea mentioned in a video clip posted on Instagram final week.
The track was used this yr in a Christmas-season advert marketing campaign by retailer M&S.
A motor-racing fanatic, Rea took half within the 1993 British Touring Automotive Championship as a visitor driver. Two of his album covers, Auberge in 1991 and The Better of Chris Rea in 1994, featured automobiles.
Rea battled severe well being points in later years, together with pancreatic most cancers within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, and a stroke in 2016, which left him with slurred speech and decreased motion in his arms and fingers. However he continued recording and touring, releasing his final album, One Wonderful Day, in 2019.
He’s survived by his spouse, who he met after they have been each youngsters, and two daughters. His household mentioned he died peacefully in hospital after a brief sickness, describing their loss as “immense”.
