About Paul Kelly

Over forty years and across thirty albums, Paul Kelly has made himself unique among world songwriters by the sheer range and innovation of his work. With each song he writes, he feels like he’s starting anew – every one a puzzle to be solved, a mystery that can never quite be explained. Few songwriters find ways to keep that creative fever burning for as long and as brightly as Kelly.

The country of his birth, its emotional interior and geographical landscape, its heroes and villains, our hopes and failings, have been a constant in Kelly’s long list of Australian-set songs. From St Kilda to King’s Cross, Adelaide, Leaps and Bounds, Maralinga (Rainy Land), Randwick Bells, Sydney from a 747. From the bus ride through the cane in To Her Door to the childhood memory of Deeper Water. He has written about the country’s greatest cricketer, Bradman, and its most infamous bushranger, Ned Kelly, in Our Sunshine.

Some songs take their time to make their mark. How to Make Gravy, a message from a prisoner who can’t be home for Christmas, wasn’t a hit at the time of release in 1996 but now is recognised as an Australian classic.

Kelly’s collaborations have been equally remarkable. From Little Things Big Things Grow, co-written with Kev Carmody about the 1966 strike by Aboriginal stockmen on Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory, has taught more Australians about the history of the battle for land rights than newspaper headlines ever could. Since the late eighties Paul has worked with many Australian Indigenous artists and stood side by side with them in their fight for justice. Three of the most seminal Indigenous songs in Australian history – Archie Roach’s Took The Children Away, Yothu Yindi’s Treaty and his and Kev Carmody’s From Little Things Big Things Grow – all bear Paul’s stamp as either co-writer or producer.

Variety has long been a key to Kelly’s recording career, which includes albums ranging across bluegrass and country (Smoke and Foggy Highway),contemporary classical (Conversations With Ghosts and Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds), experimental dub (Professor Ratbaggy) and soul (The Merri Soul Sessions). He set Shakespeare sonnets to music in 2016’s Seven Sonnets & a Song. This was followed by an album with guitarist Charlie Owen of songs they had performed at funerals (Death’s Dateless Night), In 2020 Kelly released an album in collaboration with jazz pianist Paul Grabowsky, Please Leave Your Light On. One notable collaboration, Goin’ My Way, a live recording with Neil Finn from 2013, showcases two very different songwriters digging deep into each others’ songs with verve, humour and heart.

Poets from all over the world have been an influence on Paul’s work for over forty years, but it wasn’t until 12 years ago that he started setting complete poems to music. Since then, he has set over 60 of them. His 2018 album Nature featured new Kelly songs as well as his musical settings for poems by Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas. In 2019 he collected many of his favourite poems into an anthology called Love Is Strong As Death, featuring a wealth of poetry from Homer to the present day.

When Kelly finds a theme, he goes all in. His 2021 album, Paul Kelly’s Christmas Train, is far broader in scope than the usual Christmas standards collections. True to form, it is unlike any other Christmas record ever made, featuring pop classics, folk songs, centuries old carols and hymns, poems set to music, a song in Hebrew, one in Te Reo Maori, one in Latin and a piece from the Quran that talks of Mary and the virgin birth of baby Jesus. In 2022 and 2023 he released new compilation albums on themes from Time to Rivers and Rain, Drinking and Poetry, including new tunes among some of his best-loved material. For those unfamiliar with his work, these themed albums offer a way into his vast catalogue.

In 2005 he began a series of concerts, The A-Z shows, in which he sang a hundred of his songs over four nights in alphabetical order by title. The recordings from these concerts eventually became an 8 CD box set of his songs in their most elemental form. What began as liner notes for that collection developed into what Paul described as a ‘mongrel memoir’, entitled How to Make Gravy. Using the hundred song lyrics as jumping off points, he stitched together a mosaic of chapters written in different styles – musical essays, family history, Australian history, personal reflections, tour diaries and lists. It has been described as ‘the finest and most unflinching autobiography ever written by an Australian musician.’

His 2017 album Life is Fine became his first No 1 album and that year Kelly won two ARIA Awards, for best male artist and best adult contemporary album. He returned to the awards in 2018, dedicating a poem to Kasey Chambers as he inducted her into the ARIA Hall of Fame, an honour Kelly received in 1997. He has received 17 ARIA awards for recording and five APRA awards for songwriting. Kelly’s Order of Australia in 2017 acknowledged distinguished service to the performing arts and the promotion of the national identity through his contributions as singer, songwriter and musician.

On Fever Longing Still (2024) – the title is from a line in a Shakespearean sonnet – Kelly returned to the subject of many of his greatest songs. Love in all its shades is the theme for an album which introduces new Kelly treasures like Houndstooth Dress and All Those Smiling Faces. The songs arrive in various ways. Houndstooth Dress is so fresh you hear Kelly teaching the band the song. Taught By Experts is a brilliant new version of a song he has been trying to perfect for 30 years.

For a writer who insists his songs are not autobiography, Seventy (2025) might just be his most personal album yet. Having turned seventy in January, there’s a sense of taking stock. The first words you hear on Seventy are, ‘Tell us a story.’ The last words you hear are, ‘Put another big log on the fire.’ And we’re back in the kellyverse of love, loss, legend, wit, poetry and tales tall and true.

“Feeling dry is the normal state for a songwriter,” Kelly says of the creative process. “Most days I don’t have a song or anywhere near a song. You do anything you can to break old habits, jamming with the band to find a different riff, playing a different instrument, putting the guitar in a different tuning. You have to keep turning up and keep trying, stay open. And write things down when they come into your head or otherwise they go out of your head.” Kelly’s willingness to experiment and work with collaborators including his long-time band has played an important role in keeping that creative fire flaming. His body of work includes live albums, film soundtracks, co-writes, production work and decades of touring, playing the kind of shows fans never forget.

At 70, Kelly remains creatively vital, his mission to keep creating, keep exploring, keep finding new ways to move the fingers, the music, the heart, the mind.

With Paul Kelly, there’s always a surprise.