Tag: Chris Rea

I read the news that Chris Rea died today.
I didn’t sit with it. I put his music on almost immediately. That felt automatic. And once the record was playing, I opened a blank page and started writing this.

Chris Rea was my mother’s favourite artist. I grew up with his music, but not in a way that involved choosing or discovering it. It was just there. Part of the house. Something that existed alongside everything else.

My mother has been wheelchair bound for as long as I can remember. Because of that, there are no deep stories attached to his songs for me. But his music lived indoors, in her bedroom. On vinyl and on CD. Often enough that it stopped standing out and just became a memory attached to my mother.

When I later received my mother’s old record collection, that familiarity turned into ownership. Her vinyl became mine. All of it. Including her Chris Rea albums. That’s how my own collection grew. Not by seeking things out, but by inheriting what was already known. (Amongst it was Dire Straits, Chris Norman, Marillion, T-Rex… and of course Chris Rea)

I put on Fool (If You Think It’s Over) from Whatever Happened to Benny Santini (1978). I didn’t think about why. It was just the song that came, that I had to listen first. I changed albums and am listening to a different record now. Wired to the Moon (1984).

Chris Rea has passed away. It feels, and this may be a very weird or unrelatable thought, that something that attached me to my mother fell away today. I am not sad per se, but I feel it in my chest somehow.

The record is still playing as I finish this.

Underneath, I will add a couple of songs I really like.

RIP Chris Rea 1951-2025

https://open.qobuz.com/track/44667844