Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea

Driving Home For Christmas

I’m driving home for Christmas
Oh, I can’t wait to see those faces
I’m driving home for Christmas, yeah
Well, I’m moving down that line

And it’s been so long, but I will be there
I sing this song to pass the time away
Driving in my car, driving home for Christmas

It’s gonna take some time but I’ll get there
Top to toe in tailbacks
Oh, I got red lights all around
But soon there’ll be a freeway, yeah
Get my feet on holy ground

So, I sing for you
Though you can’t hear me
When I get through
And feel you near me
Driving in my car
I’m driving home for Christmas
Driving home for Christmas
With a thousand memories
I take a look at the driver next to me
He’s just the same… just the same

Top to toe in tailbacks
Oh, I got red lights all around
I’m driving home for Christmas, yeah
Get my feet on holy ground
So, I sing for you
Though you can’t hear me
When I get through
Oh, and feel you near me
Driving in my car
Driving home for Christmas
Driving home for Christmas
With a thousand memories
I take a look at the driver next to me
He’s just the same
He’s driving home, driving home
Driving home for Christmas
Driving home for Christmas

It’s the opposite of a Christmas Miracle… just days before the holiday, we learned that English rock and blues singer-songwriter and guitarist Chris Rea has died at the age of 74, in a hospital after a brief illness.

According to Rhino, they tell us the story of how Rea wrote his most famous Christmas song, “Driving Home for Christmas”:

Penned by Rea and co-produced by Rea and Stuart Eales, “Driving Home for Christmas” was inspired by – and this is going to shock you, so you might want to sit down before continuing on with this sentence – this one time when Rea was driving home for Christmas. (Didn’t see that coming, did you?)

Rea has related the tale on more than one occasion, but the nutshell summary of the story is that he’d been recording in Abbey Road Studios in London, his wife drove down from Middlesbrough to pick him up because the label wasn’t willing to pay for his train ticket home, and while they were making the snowy drive back home, they got stuck in traffic. Noting that the other drivers around him looked downright dejected, Rea found himself singing the title of the song aloud, and in short order he began scribbling down lyrics whenever the standstill of traffic made it convenient to do so.

As it happens, Rea didn’t originally intend to record the song himself, but when his plans to pass it along to Van Morrison came to naught, he went ahead and laid down a version himself, releasing it as a Christmas single, of course, but also including it on his 1988 album, NEW LIGHT THROUGH OLD WINDOWS. The album went triple platinum in the UK, and the single hit #14 on the UK Singles chart, but that chart placement doesn’t do the song’s legacy justice: as noted in the opening paragraph, it remains a staple on holiday playlists throughout Europe to this day.

The Rhino Records articles doesn’t go into details on why his wife had to pick him up, according to Rea himself on Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Christmas Fishing that aired in 2020, Rea setup the story, “I’d just been, my manager had just left me, I’d been banned from driving, my now wife Joan, she had to drive down to London, pick me up in the Mini and take me home. And that’s when I wrote it… I think of that lovely little holiday in the Maldives. I’m not a very good pop star I wish I was. I’d like to me, when I look at Sting and people like that, I think ‘I wish I was like him.’”