Chris Rea: Music icon dies peacefully at 71
- By Web Desk -
- Dec 22, 2025
British singer-songwriter Chris Rea, whose classics included Driving Home For Christmas, passed away at the age of 71, as a family spokesperson reported.
According to the announcement, he passed away “peacefully in hospital… following a short illness.”
On 25 studio albums, Rea combined blues, pop, soul, and soft rock. Some of her hits include The Road to Hell, which is known from the UK No. 1 album of the same name; Driving Home for Christmas, which is always a seasonal favorite; and songs like On the Beach and Josephine, which gained popularity in the Balearic dance scene. Over 30 million albums were sold by him.
He had six siblings and was born in Middlesbrough in 1951 to an Italian father and an Irish mother. He subsequently remarked, “To be Irish-Italian in a coffee bar in Middlesbrough—I started my life as an outsider.”
While working manual labor jobs as a young man, notably in his father’s ice cream business, he experimented with music and thought about becoming a journalist. At the age of 22, he eventually joined Magdalene, a band that had previously included David Coverdale (later of Deep Purple). After that, he joined the Beautiful Losers; when he was offered a record deal, he went solo and released his first song, So Much Love, in 1974.
His 1978 song Fool (If You Think It’s Over), which peaked at No. 12 in the US and got him a Grammy nomination for best new artist, was his first taste of success. For a few years, he was unable to equal that accomplishment, comparing the business practices of the time to “a big manure heap of bubbling stuff.” Despite the fact that the 1985 album Water Sign was a hit throughout Europe and contributed to his success, he said, “I had no control over it; I didn’t know what to do.”
Notably, his most successful years were in the late 1980s. Dancing With Stranger, released in 1987, started a run of six UK top 10 albums, two of which reached No. 1, and was eventually accepted in the UK despite frequently falling outside of the prevailing pop trends.