I think, to be honest, Europe After The Rain does not have a very good vocal from John. The melody is a little awkward, and John is attempting to do a big kinda Frank-Sinatra-esque croony ballad-style vocal, but he's borderline off-pitch, and has either attempted to disguise this and/or exacerbated it in the mix by bunging a load of reverb and echo on his voice. This makes it a bit unfocussed and it doesn't come across and stridently and confidently as it needs to if it's to convince the pop-buying public that this is a Hit Single.
I mean don't get me wrong, it's a lovely song, the production is very pleasant and dreamy and I dig the reference to Max Ernst, but if you're gonna try and storm the charts with a ballad, you need to be able to cut it, vocal performance-wise, not just have good ideas and tasteful production.