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Paul Kelly is an Australian singer-songwriter whose unique mix of rock, country, and folk has made him one of the continent's most revered musicians. Born in Adelaide on January 13, 1955, he performed publicly for the first time in 1974 and soon moved to Melbourne, where he began performing under the name "Paul Kelly and the Dots" in 1978. Talk, his first album with the Dots, was released in 1981 and peaked at Number 44 in Australia. Although 1982's Manila and 1985's Post failed to chart, Kelly hit a new peak with 1986's gold-certified Gossip, which was attributed to "Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls." The album spawned two Top 40 hits with "Before Too Long" and "Darling It Hurts," both of which were written and co-produced by Kelly. Now backed by A&M Records, Paul Kelly began earning an international audience with 1987's Under the Sun, which went platinum in Australia and spawned the Number 16 modern rock hit "Dumb Things" in America. Kelly remained a staple of the Australian Top 40 for the following two decades, earning gold certifications with 1989's So Much Water So Close to Home, 1998's Words and Music, 2001's …Nothing but a Dream, 2005's Foggy Highway, and 2007's Stolen Apples before topping the ARIA Albums Chart for the first time with 2017's Life is Fine. His next release, Nature, also climbed to Number 1 in 2018, followed one year later by the greatest hits compilation Songs from the South: 1985–2019. A prolific songwriter well into his 60s, he maintained his status as one of Australia's longest-running Top 40 success stories with Paul Kelly's Christmas Train, which charted at Number 2 in late 2021.
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