Chris Rea, the British singer-songwriter whose hits included Driving Home For Christmas, has died at the age of 74, a spokesperson for his family said.

The statement said that he died “peacefully in hospital … following a short illness”.

Rea blended blues, pop, soul and soft rock on 25 studio albums, featuring hits including The Road to Hell, taken from a UK No 1 album of the same name; Driving Home for Christmas, a perennial seasonal favourite; and tracks such as On the Beach and Josephine that earned popularity in the Balearic dance scene. He sold more than 30m albums.

He was born in 1951 in Middlesbrough to an Italian father and Irish mother, and had six siblings. “To be Irish Italian in a coffee bar in Middlesbrough – I started my life as an outsider,” he later said.

As a young man he dabbled in music while working labouring jobs, including in his father’s ice-cream factory, and considered being a journalist. He eventually joined a band aged 22, Magdalene, which had previously featured David Coverdale (later of Deep Purple). He then joined another band, the Beautiful Losers, but struck out solo when offered a record deal, releasing his debut single, So Much Love, in 1974.

His first flush of success came in the US, where his 1978 song Fool (If You Think It’s Over) reached No 12 and earned him a Grammy nomination for best new artist. He struggled to match that achievement for some years – likening industry machinations in this period to “a big manure heap of bubbling stuff. I had no control over it, I didn’t know what to do” – though the 1985 album Water Sign was a hit across Europe and helped to turn his fortunes around.

The late 1980s were his most commercially successful period: finally embraced in the UK despite often sitting outside the dominant trends in pop, 1987’s Dancing With Strangers began a run of six UK top 10 albums, two of them reaching No 1.

The 1988 compilation album New Light Through Old Windows contained his biggest hit, Driving Home for Christmas, originally recorded in 1986. It made little impact on its first release, but the gentle, sentimental song about the communal pleasure of its title has continued to grow in popularity ever since, reaching a chart high of No 10 in 2021.

Rea originally wrote it at a low ebb when he was without a manager, out of a record contract and actually banned from driving – he had to be driven home by his wife from London to Middlesbrough because he couldn’t afford the rail fare. He wrote the lyrics on the car journey, but didn’t complete the song until a few years later.

“I used to be terrified the song would ruin any credibility I had left, but now we have a laugh with it,” he told the Guardian in 2016. “If I’m ever stuck on the M25, I’ll wind the window down and start singing, ‘I’m driving home for Christmas’ at people in cars alongside. They love it.”

Rea’s chart success waned somewhat in the 2000s, when, beginning with 2002’s Dancing Down the Stony Road, Rea turned away from pop and back towards the Delta blues that had originally inspired him.

Appropriately, given he often fixated on cars and roads in his songs, Rea was a motor racing enthusiast who raced models by Ferrari and Lotus, and participated in the 1993 British Touring Car Championship. For the 1995 Formula One season, he joined the Jordan team as a pit mechanic. “I really didn’t want to do the VIP thing, so I was in charge of Eddie Irvine’s right-rear tyre,” he later said.

He supported Labour, and in 2017 wrote an unreleased song in praise of Jeremy Corbyn called What’s So Wrong With a Man Who Tells the Truth?

Rea suffered a number of health issues during his life. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and eventually had his pancreas removed along with parts of his stomach and small intestine in 2001. The procedure caused him to become diabetic.

He had a stroke in 2016, which he described as a “very scary moment … I got it into my head that my perception of pitch had gone with the stroke. And it took a lot of convincing from people saying there’s nothing wrong with what you’re playing.” In 2017, he collapsed on stage during a concert in Oxford, and was taken to hospital to recover.

Rea is survived by his wife Joan, whom he began dating aged 17, and their daughters Josephine and Julia, both of whom Rea named hit songs after.