“The Road to Hell” by Chris Rea

Chris Rea's "The Road to Hell" is a two-part epic from the album that shares its name, and it's the sound of a man slowly coming to the boil in a traffic jam. Rea wrote it out of rush-hour fury on the M25 and M4 motorways, and it follows a lone driver stuck on the highway, working out who he is while going nowhere, a scene set by the audio that opens it. Some listeners hear another road altogether: the A19 north toward Sunderland, close to Rea's native Middlesbrough.

The seven-inch carried only the second part on its A-side, and it became his biggest hit in the UK, peaking at 10. He'd already tried the phrase out on "I Can't Dance to That" from his 1987 album Dancing with Strangers. Not everyone was sold: in Smash Hits, William Shaw teased it as hopelessly gloomy and a dead ringer for an old Dire Straits song.

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