Hailing from Middlesbrough, a port city in northeast England, Rea’s track “Idiot (If You Assume It is Over)” from his debut studio album in 1978 was his largest chart hit, reaching the US billboard Scorching 100 and incomes him a Grammy nomination.
He launched 25 studio albums and offered greater than 40 million information worldwide in a profession spanning 5 many years, cementing his repute as one in all Britain’s most outstanding pop artists.
“Driving House 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 after 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 Automobile 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 critical well being points in later years, together with pancreatic most cancers within the Nineties and early 2000s, and a stroke in 2016, which left him with slurred speech and diminished motion in his arms and fingers. However he continued recording and touring, releasing his final album, “One Tremendous Day”, in 2019.
He’s survived by his spouse, who he met once 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”.
