Song · Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls
“Before Too Long” by Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls
From the album Gossip (1986)
“Before Too Long” by Paul Kelly & the Coloured Girls appears on 3 radio countdowns from 2 stations between 1987 and 2018. It was first released in 1986 on the album Gossip. Its best result is #79 on the Triple M Ozzest 100 (2018). In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #234 alternative song of 1987 and #7,362 alternative song of all time.
"Before Too Long" gave Paul Kelly the hit the charts had been denying him, and it came as a surprise. It arrived in June 1986 on the original White Label Records, a Mushroom Records offshoot, as the first single from Gossip, the double-album debut of Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls, and it climbed to No. 15 on the Kent Music Report and hung on for 19 weeks. Kelly wrote it himself, and it pulled fresh ears toward Gossip, which became his biggest mainstream success up to then.
The video helped: John Witteron directed it, casting Kelly as a put-upon cabbie grinding through a night shift of oddball passengers. At the 1986 Countdown Australian Music Awards the song was up for Best Single and Best Male Performance in a Video and lost both to John Farnham's "You're the Voice".
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | 80 | Live 105 San Francisco, CA | Live 105 Top 105.3 Songs of 1987 | 105 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | 474 | Live 105 | Live 105 Top 500 Songs of All-Time (Memorial Day 1988) | 501 |
| 2018 | 79 | Triple M | Triple M Ozzest 100 (2018) | 100 |
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