but the songs live on forever

December 2025

Classic Rock Musician Singer Songwriter

Died On This Date (December 22, 2025) Chris Rea / Yacht Rock Pioneer

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Photo Credit: Dutch Simba via Wikimedia

Chris Rea, the English singer, songwriter, and guitarist known for his gravelly vocals and blues-influenced sound, died on December 22, 2025. He was 74. His family said he died peacefully in hospital following a short illness.

Rea was born March 4, 1951, in Middlesbrough, England, to an Italian father and Irish mother. He began playing guitar in his early 20s and signed his first record deal in the mid-’70s. His debut album, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini?, was released in 1978 and included “Fool (If You Think It’s Over),” which became an international hit and earned a Grammy nomination.

Over the next four decades, Rea released more than 25 studio albums and sold an estimated 30 million records worldwide, with his strongest commercial success in the UK and Europe. His best-known albums include On the Beach (1986), Dancing with Strangers (1987), The Road to Hell (1989), and Auberge (1991). Several of these releases topped the UK Albums Chart and established him as a consistent presence in British popular music through the 1980s and early 1990s.

Rea was widely recognized for his distinctive slide guitar style, rooted in blues and soul, and for songwriting that often focused on work, travel, relationships, and everyday experience. His voice and guitar tone became defining elements of his recordings and live performances.

One of his most enduring songs, “Driving Home for Christmas,” was first released in 1986 and grew steadily over time into one of the UK’s most frequently played holiday recordings. The song regularly re-entered the charts decades after its initial release.

In the early 2000s, Rea faced significant health issues, including pancreatic cancer, which led to major surgery, and later a stroke in 2016. After these setbacks, he shifted his focus toward blues-based projects and released a large volume of music independently, often through his own label, Jazzee Blue.

Chris Rea continued recording and releasing music well into his later years, largely outside the mainstream music industry. His career spanned nearly fifty years and remained closely aligned with the musical influences that shaped his earliest work.

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Americana Musician Singer Songwriter

Died On This Date (December 15, 2025) Joe Ely / Alt-Country Legend

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Joe Ely, the Texas-born singer, songwriter, and bandleader whose music carried the dust, humor, and hard-earned poetry of the Lone Star State far beyond its borders, has died. He was 78.

Born on February 9, 1947 in Amarillo and raised in Lubbock, Ely came out of a West Texas scene that quietly reshaped American music. Alongside Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, he co-founded the Flatlanders, a group whose early work planted the seeds for what would later be called progressive country. Though the band’s influence would take decades to fully register, its impact proved lasting and profound.

Ely’s solo career brought that restless West Texas spirit into sharper focus. Beginning with his 1977 self-titled debut, followed by albums like Honky Tonk Masquerade, Down on the Drag, Live Shots, and Letter to Laredo, Ely wrote songs that felt road-tested and lived-in. His music blurred lines between country, rock, folk, and border sounds, delivered with a voice that sounded both conversational and battle-worn. He sang about small towns, long nights, border crossings, and the quiet resolve of people who keep moving forward.

Onstage, Ely earned a reputation as a fearless performer. His shows were physical, loud, and unpredictable, powered by a band that matched his intensity. That same energy caught the attention of the Clash in the late 1970s, leading to shared bills in the UK and a rare cultural exchange that proved Texas songwriting and punk urgency spoke the same language.

Collaboration remained central to Ely’s life in music. He worked with Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt, Los Lobos, and many others, while repeatedly returning to the Flatlanders for reunions and new recordings that deepened the group’s legacy. Even later in life, albums like Panhandle Rambler, Satisfaction Guaranteed, and Love and Freedom showed an artist still curious, still engaged, and still writing from experience rather than nostalgia.

Joe Ely leaves behind a catalog that reads like a map of American roots music, marked by detours, borderlines, and back roads. His songs remain out there, rolling down the highway, exactly where they belong.

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Disco Funk Musician R&B Singer

Died On This Date (December 14, 2025) Carl Carlton / Popular ’70s R&B Singer

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Carl Carlton, the soulful singer whose smooth tenor lit up radio playlists in the late 1970s and early 1980s with hits like “She’s a Bad Mama Jama (She Built, She Built),” died on September 27, 2023. He was 69.

Born on May 21, 1953, in Detroit, Carlton came of age in a city where soul music was a way of life. He began recording as a teenager and quickly showed a gift for blending streetwise swagger with polished pop instincts, a combination that made him a natural fit for the era when R&B regularly crossed over to the mainstream. After early singles in the late ’60s and early ’70s, his career found its defining moment with Carl Carlton in 1980, the album that delivered “She’s a Bad Mama Jama,” written by Johnny Gill and produced by Leon Sylvers III. The song became a massive hit, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and turning Carlton into a household name almost overnight.

But Carlton was no one-hit-wonder. Tracks like “I Wanna Be Your Main Squeeze” and “This Feeling’s Rated X-Tra” showed his range as a vocalist who could handle funk, romantic soul, and radio-friendly R&B with equal confidence. His voice had an easy warmth and a sly edge, the kind that sounded just as comfortable riding a dancefloor groove as it did delivering a slow-burn ballad.

As musical trends shifted, Carlton continued to perform and record into the 2010s, remaining a respected presence on the soul and R&B circuit. For fans, his work remains tightly linked to a moment when funk basslines, crisp production, and undeniable hooks ruled the airwaves, and when a great voice could still cut through everything else.

Latin Musician Producer

Died On This Date (December 13, 2025) Abraham Quintanilla / Musician & Producer; Father of Selena

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Photo Credit: YouTube grab via Wikimedia

Abraham Quintanilla Sr., the hard-driving patriarch who helped shape one of the most important Latin music stories of the late 20th century, died on December 13, 2025, at the age of 86. Cause of death was not immediately released. He was best known as the father and early manager of Selena Quintanilla, but his role in her rise went far beyond a title, rooted in belief, discipline, and an unshakable conviction that his daughter’s voice belonged on the biggest stages.

Born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, Quintanilla was a former musician himself, a onetime member of the band Los Dinos, before turning his focus to his family. When he recognized Selena’s natural talent as a child, he reorganized his life around it, forming Selena y Los Dinos and committing fully to a vision that, at the time, felt improbable. He pulled his children out of school, booked shows wherever he could, and pushed them through years of grueling performances across Texas and northern Mexico, often playing to indifferent crowds and sleeping in less-than-ideal conditions.

That persistence paid off. Under Quintanilla’s guidance, Selena became a defining voice of Tejano music, breaking barriers for a genre that rarely crossed into the mainstream. His approach was strict and protective, sometimes controversial, but always driven by the desire to shield his daughter from an industry he viewed as unforgiving and predatory. After Selena’s murder in 1995, Quintanilla became the keeper of her legacy, overseeing posthumous releases, tributes, and projects that helped introduce her music to new generations around the world.

In later years, he continued to speak publicly about Selena’s impact, her work ethic, and the cultural doors she opened, never allowing her story to be reduced to tragedy alone. To him, she was first and always a working musician who earned every step forward.

Classical Gospel Opera Singer

Died On This Date (December 8, 2025) Jubilant Sykes / Highly Regarded Vocalist

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Photo Credit: James Pratt via wikimedia

Jubilant Sykes, the Grammy-nominated baritone whose voice moved effortlessly from sacred spirituals to the classical stage, was fatally stabbed in his Santa Monica home, allegedly by his son. He was 71.

Born in Los Angeles, Sykes grew up singing in church before moving into a career that refused to sit neatly under one label. He trained in opera, but the way he sang was never confined to it. His performances reached the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and concert halls across Europe, yet he was just as committed to the gospel, jazz, folk, and spiritual pieces that shaped him.

Sykes recorded widely throughout his career, releasing albums that included Jubilant, Wait for Me, Jubilation, and Jubilant Sykes Sings Copland and Other Spirituals. His acclaimed appearance on Leonard Bernstein’s Mass earned a Grammy nomination and brought his name to a broader audience who may not have encountered his work on stage.

Fans and critics often spoke about the way he delivered a song. The depth, the breath, the phrasing, and the quiet conviction made familiar pieces feel newly unveiled. Whether performing for a packed concert hall or interpreting spirituals rooted in tradition, he sang with both discipline and vulnerability.

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