Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly grew up in Adelaide, drifted around Australia and landed in Melbourne in 1976, where he threw himself into the pub rock scene and cut two albums with the Dots. By 1985 he was in Sydney fronting Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls, a band that went out overseas as the Messengers to dodge any racial reading of the word "coloured", and his run of hits took in "Before Too Long", "Darling It Hurts" and "To Her Door", a story song so plainly told it hurts. He was back in Melbourne by the end of the '80s and broke up the Messengers in 1991.

He has never sat still since. Bluegrass, dub reggae, folk, country and plain old rock have all passed through his hands, but the constant is the writing: songs that map Australian lives and landscapes with a novelist's eye. He co-wrote "Treaty" with members of Yothu Yindi, wrote a string of songs about Indigenous history and injustice, and in 2002 had 14 female artists cover his songs on the tribute Women at the Well. "How to Make Gravy" shares its title with his 2010 memoir.

Late in the game he found a new gear. Life Is Fine, with "Firewood and Candles", gave him his first number-one album in 2017, the same year he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, and Nature followed in 2018. He has won 14 ARIA Awards, a Hall of Fame induction among them.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.