Fool (If You Think It's Over)

The song's lyric came out of conversations Rea had with his younger sister, who was dealing with her first breakup. He assured her that her life was not over, even though it felt that way.

This was the first single from Chris Rea's major-label debut album. Surprisingly, it initially made little impact in his native Great Britain, but was a big hit in the United States, where it peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent three weeks at #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart. It later scored on the British charts, where it peaked at #30. In America, it is by far Rea's best-known song - he never again made it higher than #44 ("Diamonds") on the Hot 100. In the UK, he fared much better, becoming a consistent hit-maker by the mid-'80s. Two of his albums, The Road to Hell (1989) and Auberge (1991), went to #1 in Britain.

Gus Dudgeon, known for his work with Elton John, produced this track and the rest of the Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? album. Dudgeon gave the song the contemporary hit sound the record company was looking for, but Rea felt hijacked, as he thought of the song as a soul number. In a 2017 Songfacts interview with Rea, he said: "I did as I was told by a huge producer, and he'd been told by the record company to turn me into the next Elton John, which couldn't be further away from what I was. But they had decided that's what he was going to do. They didn't want me to sing low because that wasn't commercial. That is all, thankfully, just gone now, which is great. I've still got a piece of paper and on the original lyrics it says: ''Fool (If You Think It's Over).' Song for Al Green. 96 beats per minute. Al Jackson, drums.' And that's what 'Fool' was always meant to be. So, I don't know where that rhythm box came from. But we survived that."