"Hello Friend" | ||||
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Single by Chris Rea | ||||
from the album On the Beach | ||||
B-side | "Driving Home for Christmas" | |||
Released | 1986 | |||
Length | 4:20 | |||
Label | Magnet | |||
Songwriter(s) | Chris Rea | |||
Producer(s) | Chris Rea Stuart Eales | |||
Chris Rea singles chronology | ||||
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Music video | ||||
"Hello Friend (2019 Remaster)" on YouTube |
"Hello Friend" is a song by British singer-songwriter Chris Rea that was released in 1986 as the third single from his eighth studio album On the Beach . The song was written by Rea, and produced by Rea and David Richards. [1]
For its release as a single, Rea re-recorded the song and produced it alongside Stuart Eales. [2] It reached No. 79 in the UK Singles Chart and remained in the Top 100 for six weeks. [3]
The single's B-side is the first version of "Driving Home for Christmas" that Rea recorded. The song was re-recorded for New Light Through Old Windows in 1988 and released as a single in its own right. [4] A special double 7-inch edition of the single was also released, containing two live tracks recorded earlier in 1986 at Montreux. [5] The re-recorded version of "Hello Friend" was later included on the two-disc deluxe and remastered edition of On the Beach, released by Magnet in 2019. [6]
On its release, Chris Eary of the Reading Evening Post wrote: "Double record pack featuring live and studio stuff with the title being a gruff smoocher." [7] In a review of On the Beach, Glenn A. Baker of the Sydney Morning Herald commented: "Rea's atmospheric songs, particularly "Little Blonde Plaits" and "Hello Friend", sound like they should be on the soundtrack of a David Puttnam film." [8] Rob Caldwell of AllMusic retrospectively noted the album's recurring theme of "deal[ing] with remembrance and old love", and selected "Hello Friend" as one example of this. [1]
Production
Other
Chart (1986) | Peak position |
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UK Singles Chart [3] | 79 |
Christopher Anton Rea is an English rock and blues singer and guitarist from Middlesbrough. Known for his distinctive voice and his slide guitar playing, Rea has recorded twenty five solo albums, two of which topped the UK Chart, The Road to Hell in 1989 and its successor, Auberge, in 1991. He had already become "a major European star by the time he finally cracked the UK Top 10" with the single "The Road to Hell ".
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