Artist · chart history
Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls
Band Australia Active 1985–1991 Paul Kelly-led Australian rock band
Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls formed in 1985 in Australia and was active until 1991. Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls has 6 chart appearances on 5 radio countdowns from 3 stations on RockLists, spanning 1987–2025. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “To Her Door”, which appears on 2 lists with a best position of #22. The station that charted Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls most often is Live 105 (San Francisco, CA), with 3 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 1987.
Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls were the band Kelly put together once he had moved to Sydney by 1985, after growing up in Adelaide and doing time in Melbourne's pub rock scene with the Dots. With Steve Connolly, Spencer P. Jones, Michael Barclay, Michael Armiger, Peter Bull and Jon Schofield on bass passing through the lineup, they gave Kelly's story-songs a lean, rootsy snap that sat somewhere between folk, rock and country.
Gossip in 1986 and Under the Sun in 1987 both went top 20 in Australia. "Before Too Long" came off the first, and "To Her Door" off the second became Kelly's biggest home hit in 1987, later named by the Australasian Performing Right Association among the Top 30 Australian songs of all time. Kelly's gift was the detail: small, closely watched chronicles of Australian lives and places that made a huge country feel close enough to touch.
Outside Australia the band went by Paul Kelly and the Messengers, to head off any racial reading of the word "coloured", and the new name eventually took over at home too. Kelly headed back to Melbourne as the decade closed and broke up the Messengers in 1991.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | To Her Door | 2 | #22 | – | – | |
| 2 | Before Too Long | 3 | #79 | – | 1987 | |
| 3 | Dumb Things | 1 | #105 | – | 1988 |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
Every countdown appearance
| Year | # | Song | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 22 | To Her Door | Triple J Hottest 100 of Australian Songs (2025) |
| 2018 | 26 | To Her Door | Triple M Ozzest 100 (2018) |
| 2018 | 79 | Before Too Long | Triple M Ozzest 100 (2018) |
| 1988 | 105 | Dumb Things | Live 105 Top 105.3 Songs of 1988 |
| 1988 | 474 | Before Too Long | Live 105 Top 500 Songs of All-Time (Memorial Day 1988) |
| 1987 | 80 | Before Too Long | Live 105 Top 105.3 Songs of 1987 |
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