Paul Kelly: the Coloured Girls, To Her Door and From Little Things Big Things Grow | Ultimate Aussie Pub Rock Reunion

Why fans still care

PAUL KELLY writes songs that are full of real Australian places, and people hang on to them. In triple j’s Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, How to Make Gravy came in at number 9 and To Her Door at number 22. ARIA counts 14 top 10 albums and four number 1s.

Early life

Paul Kelly was born in 1955 and grew up in Adelaide. The Sydney Opera House’s profile says he played trumpet and piano at school, and that he wrote his first published song at 19 after listening to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. His first public show was at a Hobart folk club in 1974, as ARIA and the National Portrait Gallery both record.

Career chapters

1. 1974first public performance, Hobart
2. 1982Paul Kelly and the Dots break up after two albums
3. 1985records Post in Sydney; the Coloured Girls form
4. 1986Gossip
5. 1987Under the Sun
6. 1991the Messengers disband; Treaty and From Little Things Big Things Grow come out
7. 1997ARIA Hall of Fame
8. 2005the A to Z shows begin
9. 2010How to Make Gravy, the book
10. 2011APRA Ted Albert Award
11. 2013Goin’ Your Way with Neil Finn
12. 2017AO; Life Is Fine goes to number 1
13. 2018Nature goes to number 1; APRA Song of the Year
14. 2019Songs From The South goes to number 1
15. 2025Seventy

Melbourne and the Dots to 1982

He moved to Melbourne and fronted a pub band, Paul Kelly and the Dots. They made two albums and broke up in 1982.

Sydney, the Coloured Girls and the Messengers 1985 to 1991

By 1985 he was in Sydney, where he recorded Post and put together Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls. Their double album Gossip was one of the biggest Australian records of 1986, the National Portrait Gallery says, and Before Too Long came off it. Under the Sun followed in 1987 with To Her Door, which the Opera House calls his highest-charting local hit, and Dumb Things. In the US the band went out as Paul Kelly and the Messengers, and they called it a day in 1991.

Songs with other people 1991 onward

In 1991, the Sydney Opera House says, he and Kev Carmody released From Little Things Big Things Grow, about the 1966 Wave Hill walk-off led by Gurindji stockman Vincent Lingiari, and the same year he co-wrote Yothu Yindi’s Treaty. His own site lists Archie Roach’s Took The Children Away alongside those two as songs that carry his stamp as co-writer or producer. He also wrote music for the film Lantana, as Maton and the Opera House both note. In 2013 he toured with Neil Finn, Who’s Who number 8, and the shows became the live album Goin’ Your Way.

Number 1 albums 2017 onward

Life Is Fine became his first number 1 album in 2017. Nature topped the chart in 2018 and Songs From The South in 2019, three number 1s in three years. Paul Kelly’s Christmas Train made it four, reaching number 1 in 2022. Seventy, his 28th studio album by ARIA’s count, debuted at number 2 in November 2025 and went straight to number 1 on the Australian Albums Chart.

Craft, sound and style

The accent

The National Portrait Gallery says he sings with “a marked Australian accent”, and that many of his songs name specific Australian people and places. His own site runs through a few: Adelaide, Leaps and Bounds, Randwick Bells and Sydney from a 747.

Any style that fits the song

His own site lists bluegrass and country on Smoke and Foggy Highway, experimental dub with Professor Ratbaggy, soul on The Merri Soul Sessions and Shakespeare’s sonnets on Seven Sonnets & a Song in 2016. His site says he has set more than 60 poems to music.

A to Z

In 2005, his site says, he began the A to Z shows, singing 100 of his songs over four nights in alphabetical order by title. The recordings became an 8 CD box set, and the liner notes grew into the book he calls his “mongrel memoir”, How to Make Gravy.

Stories people still tell

1. Dumb Things at the ARIAs.

   At the 2017 ARIA Awards he played Dumb Things with Dan Sultan and A.B. Original, on the night he won Best Male Artist.

2. The poet laureate.

   Andrew Denton called him “the poet laureate” of Australia, the Sydney Opera House notes. Denton also handed him the APRA Ted Albert Award in 2011.

3. A co-write with a Beatle.

   Paul McCartney overheard Thelma Plum’s Made For You, which features Kelly, and asked if he could add to it, the Opera House says. “So I can say I’ve written a song with Paul McCartney,” Kelly told ABC Radio National, as the Sydney Opera House quotes him.

Legacy

Paul Kelly went into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1997 and was made an AO in 2017, in the same honours list as Jimmy Barnes, Who’s Who number 14, and Nick Cave, Who’s Who number 28. His award was for “distinguished service to the performing arts and to the promotion of the national identity”. In 2013 the National Portrait Gallery gave him a biographical exhibition.