Driving Home for Christmas

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Driving Home for Christmas
Chris Rea
publication November 1986
length 4:34 min. (Original version)
4:04 min. (2009 version)
Genre (s) Pop rock , Christmas carol
Author (s) Chris Rea
text Chris Rea
music Chris Rea, Stuart Eales
Label Magnet Records
album New Light Through Old Windows

Driving Home for Christmas is a Christmas song by British singer Chris Rea that was released in 1986. It became a modern Christmas classic in the 2000s.

Emergence

Rea came up with the idea for the song when he was stuck in a traffic jam in the run-up to Christmas in 1978 and pondered with his wife that many other people were sure to feel the same way. He described it this way:

“It was just before Christmas. My wife picked me up from London in her little car, a Mini. It was cheaper than taking the train. But the traffic in the city was terrible. We got into a traffic jam. I saw all these bad-tempered guys around me in their cars. And then I just started singing. "

The song remained unpublished for a few years thereafter. When Van Morrison inquired about the song in 1986, Rea decided to publish it himself.

Publication and commercial success

The song first appeared in Europe in November 1986. A new recording of the song Hello Friend from the album On the Beach was used as the B-side , and singles with a swapped sequence of pages were also brought into trade. The publication was initially commercially unsuccessful. A release of the song in late 1987 in Japan was also unsuccessful.

In October 1988, Rea released the compilation New Light Through Old Windows , which included the song Driving Home for Christmas . It was in November 1988 on the titled after EP Driving Home for Christmas: The Christmas EP and simultaneously as a single re-released , this succeeded in early December of entry into the UK charts , where the song was able to hold initially for five weeks and position 57 reached .

In the following years several re-releases took place, so that the song became a modern Christmas classic. A re-release in Germany in 2002 resulted in a first-time chart entry, the song reached number 73 and stayed in the charts for four weeks. In 2009 Rea re-recorded the song, the new version has been played mostly on the radio since then .

In the course of considering music downloads in many European music charts in 2007, the song was able to return to the British charts for the first time in more than 19 years, and in Austria and Switzerland it made its first appearance at Christmas 2007 and 2008, respectively. In 2008 the song even reached number two in Norway. Since then, it has been customary to re-enter various European music charts every Christmas, with the song sometimes even climbing higher positions than in previous years. In 2015/16 it reached a new high in Great Britain and Germany. On December 12, 2014, it was awarded a silver record by the BPI for 200,000 units sold since its re-release on November 14, 2004.

Cover versions

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Singles
Stacey Solomon
  UK 27 December 31, 2011 (1 week)

Like the original, cover versions of the song were never particularly successful. In 2011, Stacey Solomon was the only one who had a chart success with the song alongside Rea. The song has been covered several times , especially in the 2010s , among others by:

Chart positions since 1986

year Chart placements
GermanyGermany DE AustriaAustria AT SwitzerlandSwitzerland CH United KingdomUnited Kingdom UK
1988/89 - - - 53
(5 weeks)
2002/03 73
(4 weeks) 		- - -
2007/08 31
(4 weeks) 		- 90
(1 week) 		33
(5 weeks)
2008/09 32
(5 weeks) 		35
(4 weeks) 		41
(4 weeks) 		53
(4 weeks)
2009/10 35
(4 weeks) 		41
(4 weeks) 		53
(1 week) 		40
(4 weeks)
2010/11 47
(5 weeks) 		56
(4 weeks) 		- 67
(3 weeks)
2011/12 54
(5 weeks) 		- - 36
(4 weeks)
2012/13 62
(4 weeks) 		72
(2 weeks) 		- 36
(4 weeks)
2013/14 58
(3 weeks) 		65
(1 week) 		- 53
(4 weeks)
2014/15 38
(5 weeks) 		41
(4 weeks) 		- 43
(4 weeks)
2015/16 23
(3 weeks) 		48
(3 weeks) 		- 29
(4 weeks)
2016/17 32
(4 weeks) 		23
(4 weeks) 		63
(1 week) 		26
(3 weeks)
2017/18 8
(4 weeks) 		12
(4 weeks) 		25
(3 weeks) 		14
(4 weeks)
2018/19 5
(5 weeks) 		5
(4 weeks) 		15
(3 weeks) 		11
(4 weeks)
2019/20 5
(5 weeks) 		4
(4 weeks) 		12
(4 weeks) 		24
(4 weeks)
All in all 5
(58 weeks) 		4
(38 weeks) 		12
(17 weeks) 		11
(56 weeks)

supporting documents

  1. ^ "Driving Home for Christmas" by Chris Rea : Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk from November 29, 2016.
  2. ↑ Chris Rea - "Driving Home for Christmas" at Norddeutscher Rundfunk
  3. ↑ Driving Home for Christmas in the Norwegian charts ( Memento from December 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ award database of the British Phonographic Industry
  5. ↑ Charts UK
  6. ^ Cover versions of Driving Home for Christmas at coverinfo.de, accessed on December 12, 2016
  7. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK

Web links