Chris Rea

Chris Rea came out of Middlesbrough with a gravelly voice, a slide guitar and a way of pouring blues into soft rock until you couldn't tell where one stopped and the other began. In America he was best known for "Fool (If You Think It's Over)", which reached No. 12 on the Hot 100 in 1978, spent three weeks on top of the Adult Contemporary chart and earned him a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. He never toured the States, though, choosing family life over bigger fame.

Back home the breakthrough came with Shamrock Diaries in 1985, and platinum sellers On the Beach and Dancing with Strangers followed. Then The Road to Hell topped the UK albums chart in 1989, and its single "The Road to Hell (Part 2)", all brooding slide and rumbling dread, finally took him into the UK singles top 10 after he'd already become a star across Europe. Auberge went to number one as well in 1991, and "Working On It" topped the US Mainstream Rock chart.

Serious health problems in the early 2000s pushed him toward the blues full-time, on his own Jazzee Blue label, with Dancing Down the Stony Road and the sprawling 11-CD Blue Guitars. Along the way came hits from "Josephine" to "Driving Home for Christmas", and more than 30 million records sold. He died in December 2025.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.