Musician Chris Rea has died

English musician, singer-songwriter Chris Rea has died at the age of 74. The death was reported by Britannia Yleisradio According to the BBC family representative.

According to the representative, Rea died surrounded by his family at the hospital on Monday morning, December 22. The death was described as peaceful. The musician, who faced serious health problems in his life, had suffered from an illness for a short time.

Rea was known, among other things, for his Christmas hits Driving Home for Christmas.

Chris Rea was born in Middlesbrough on 4 March 1951 to an Italian father and an Irish mother. Because of his background, he experienced feelings of being an outsider in his hometown. He had six siblings.

When he was young, Rea worked, among other things, in his father’s ice cream factory and considered a career as a journalist, but in the end chose music. He started his career in the local band Magdalene, which in 1975 won a national talent competition under the name Beautiful Losers. However, the band did not get a recording contract, and Rea went on a solo career.

From his debut album Whatever Happened to Benny Santini released a hit single Fool (If You Think It’s Over)which also helped the album itself sell gold in the United States.

However, Rea focused on her career in Europe, and became one of the most popular European artists of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Rea’s roots were in blues and rock, but his output mostly consists of middle-of-the-road rock songs.

A collection of Rea’s 1980s albums New Light Through Old Windows (1988) sold well in both Europe and the United States. It was followed by Rea’s best single album The Road to Hellwith the title track, Rea critically examines the state of the modern world. Mixed The Road to Hell that the album that followed it Auberge went to number one in the UK, but did not succeed in the US.

Chris Rea was a strong, rough-voiced soloist and a good guitarist who balanced throughout his career between his own musical preferences and commercial demands.

His output fell between these two extremes. At his best, Rea managed to combine blues and a more commercial rock style into memorable tunes.

The musician suffered from several health problems during his life. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and eventually had his pancreas removed in surgery in 2001. The surgery caused diabetes.

In 2016, Rea suffered a stroke, but continued to perform.

Sale the most famous song worldwide is probably his gentle Christmas carol Driving Home for Christmaswhich has been played frequently on radios in Finland at Christmas time as well. In its home country of Britain, it has repeatedly returned to the charts and was voted among the most loved Christmas tunes in the Kingdom.

The song was originally released as the B-side of Rea’s single in 1986. A new version was recorded two years later.

At least a version of the song has been made in Finland Arja Saijonmaa. The song has also been heard in numerous commercials.

According to Rea, the song is a car version of Christmas carols. He told a British magazine in 2016 The Guardianissathat he had already written the song in 1978 – in the car.

Rea had been at the Abbey Road studio in London, but since the recording contract had expired, he couldn’t get the company to pay for the train ticket and he couldn’t afford it himself. He also didn’t have a driver’s license at the time. So the wife came to pick up her husband at his home in Middlesbrough in an old Austin Mini.

The inspiration for the song came when the couple got stuck in a traffic jam in the snow. Rea looked at the other motorists who looked miserable in their cars. He started humming “We’re driving home for Christmas…” and wrote the words down every time the lights of oncoming cars reflected inside.

The melody for the song was not born until years later.

“I used to worry that the song would destroy every last bit of my credibility, but now we laugh about it,” Rea told The Guardian in 2016.

with that Chris Rea’s most famous song was born in a car was no mere coincidence: he was a car guy through and through.

of The Guardian by Later, Rea was an active motorsport enthusiast who competed in Ferrari and Lotus models. In 1995, he worked in the Formula 1 series as a pit mechanic for the Jordan team.