Pre-Release
- 7 NOV 2025
- 13 songs
- Paul Kelly's Greatest Hits: Songs From The South: Volume 1 & 2 · 1991
Essential Albums
- Comedy is notable for several reasons, one being that it’s a double album, Kelly’s second after 1986’s Gossip. More pertinently, though, it was the last with his backing band The Messengers, with Kelly disbanding the line-up to explore new creative pastures. (They were, however, featured on an album of B-sides and unreleased songs, Hidden Things, which came out in 1992.) The record also features one of the singer’s most enduring tracks in “From Little Things Big Things Grow”, his collaboration with Kev Carmody that tells the story of Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji people’s struggle for land rights. “That song started with the image of Gough Whitlam pouring dirt into Vincent Lingiari's hands, so that was a visual image to kick that song off,” Kelly tells Apple Music. “It's a really powerful photo.” Elsewhere Kelly ruminates on familiar themes of love, life and regret, with the country-tinged “I Can’t Believe We Were Married” reflecting on a relationship’s decline from early passion to polite post-split civility, while “Sydney from a 727” riffs on the beauty of the city from a plane window at night and the spontaneity of just picking up and leaving. The wistfully nostalgic “Wintercoat” is a heavy-hearted number that uses the titular garment as a metaphor for the passing of time and relationships, the coat holding “all the stories I don’t remember anymore”. It was the first of Kelly’s songs to catch the attention of Aotearoa New Zealand singer-songwriter Marlon Williams, who many years later would contribute to 2021’s Paul Kelly’s Christmas Train. “In about 2004, Dad brought home an Uncut magazine from the library,” he tells Apple Music. “The accompanying CD had ‘Wintercoat’ on it. I burned it to my computer and played that song over and over again.” The album concludes not with the colourfully titled “Little Boy Don’t Lose Your Balls”, but with a hidden track called “David Gower”, continuing the singer’s penchant for immortalising his sporting heroes, this time to the tune of Cuban song “Guantanamera”.
- The influence of author Raymond Carver looms large over So Much Water So Close to Home. Kelly named the record after one of Carver’s short stories, which also inspired the track “Everything’s Turning to White”. “That is directly based on the story of fishermen driving up to the mountains for a weekend,” Kelly tells Apple Music. “And on the first night, they find a dead body. They decide not to report it until they finish their fishing for a couple of days. The song matches the story very closely. That was a direct influence.” Recorded in Los Angeles with co-producer Scott Litt—who worked on R.E.M.’s biggest albums, such as Out of Time and Automatic for the People—So Much Water So Close to Home houses several of Kelly’s most beloved songs. The acerbic “Sweet Guy,” complete with animalistic howl at the beginning, is written from the perspective of a woman under the spell of a man despite being subjected to domestic violence (“What makes such a sweet guy turn so mean?”). The jangly pop of “Careless”, meanwhile, finds Kelly posing a series of questions (“How many cabs in New York City? How many angels on a pin?”) over an airy chord progression and a beguiling, insistent guitar line from Steve Connolly. At times romantic (“Most Wanted Man in the World”), at others contemplative (his musing on mortality in “You Can’t Take It with You”), Kelly’s interest in Australian stories and the Indigenous experience also shines through on the uptempo shuffle of “Pigeon/Jundamurra”, about an Aboriginal leader called Jundamurra (nicknamed Pigeon) who worked as a tracker for the police before killing the constable to whom he was assigned.
- “I could see parallels between writing songs and writing short stories,” Paul Kelly tells Apple Music. “They’re both short forms. You have to get a lot of information across in a short time.” For proof of Kelly’s ability in that area, look no further than “To Her Door”, a song about a couple that “hit the skids” so “she took both the kids”. The potential for redemption comes in the second verse, when the husband writes to his wife and says, “I want to see you”, leading to him “shaking in his seat, riding through the streets, in a Silver Top to her door”. Will the reunion work out? We’ll never know. “Ending it unresolved was probably where the [author Raymond] Carver influence came in,” says Kelly. “The thing particularly about Raymond Carver’s stories is that there was always a lot happening around the edges. Often these stories might end with something about to happen or something unresolved. There was a world to continue outside that story.” “To Her Door” may be the centrepiece of Kelly’s second album with backing band The Messengers, but it’s by no means the only highlight. Opening track “Dumb Things” was inspired when the singer overheard two mates talking in a pub, one of whom said, “I’ve done all the dumb things.” The lilting “Bradman” is a tribute to the legendary cricketer, one of Kelly’s favourites. “‘Bradman’ went way back to my childhood, when I would read a lot of cricket books, and there's a famous biography of Bradman by Irving Rosenwater who was a statistician,” recalls Kelly. “I remember reading that book again in my mid-twenties, and ‘Bradman’ started coming out of that.” As ever with Kelly, Australia and its characters provide a rich creative well from which to draw—witness the rollicking “Forty Miles to Saturday Night”, a song about getting ready to blow off steam after a hard week on an Outback station (“There’s a place on Fortune Street/And a band down there called Gunga Din/And Joanne from Miner’s Creek/She said that she’d be back again”).
- It’s tempting to believe that Paul Kelly was always an accepted legend of Australian song, but it wasn’t until his fourth album that he achieved his long-sought commercial breakthrough. By then he had already cut a pair of early LPs (which he has since disowned), followed by 1985’s critically adored solo effort Post and the assembly of a versatile backing band dubbed The Coloured Girls (later renamed The Messengers, due to the racial connotations associated with the name)—a reference to Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”. Gossip is the bold double-album statement that finally brought Kelly’s literate, observation-rich songwriting to the mid-’80s mainstream. Overflowing with ideas and conviction, these 24 tracks cement his as a sharp new poetic voice nurtured from storied city pubs and ramshackle sharehouses. Kelly had already flexed his talent for sharing recognisable characters and settings with the earlier gem “From St. Kilda to Kings Cross”, but Gossip proved even more devoted to chronicling youthful urban misadventures and epiphanies alike. “Leaps & Bounds” name-checks iconic Melbourne sports stadium the MCG, while “Adelaide” salutes Kelly’s birthplace, and “Darling It Hurts” and other songs roam across all walks of Sydney nightlife. Flanked by guitarist Steve Connolly, drummer Michael Barclay, keyboardist Peter Bull and bassist Jon Schofield, Kelly made a convincing case for pub rock’s thoughtful (and overdue) coming of age. There’s an outspoken sense of social conscience in “Maralinga (Rainy Land)”, about British atomic weapon testing affecting South Australia’s Indigenous population. There are flashes of rascally wit too, as you’d expect from a distinctly Australian voice, and several worthy songs from Post are revisited with the full-band treatment. Making the most of its expanded run time, Kelly and band range from ringing guitar pop—“Before Too Long” and “So Blue” actually rival R.E.M. for jangling brightness—to punk-indebted muscle (“Down on My Speedway”) and even bluesy reggae (“Last Train to Heaven”). That ambitious jukebox approach foreshadowed some of the far-reaching stylistic detours of Kelly’s multi-decade career, from dub and bluegrass to television scores and piano-flecked jazz. As a firm bridge between underground credibility and wider success, Gossip established Kelly as an Australian role model who’s been looked up to by artists such as Courtney Barnett (who has performed with him) and Angus & Julia Stone. That commercial validation also allowed Kelly to help elevate such collaborators as Archie Roach and Linda and Vika Bull, both as a producer and via his round-robin touring and recording project Merri Soul Sessions.
- When Paul Kelly released his debut solo album in 1985, his reputation as one of Australia’s greatest songwriters had yet to crystallise. Instead, he was a struggling 30-year-old musician who’d released two poorly performing albums with previous outfit Paul Kelly and the Dots. Upon moving from Melbourne to Sydney he was also effectively homeless, temporarily staying with Cold Chisel keyboard player Don Walker. It was on the grand piano in Walker’s Kings Cross home that Kelly wrote “Satisfy Your Woman” and album opener “From St Kilda to Kings Cross”. Later he would shack up with Dragon keyboardist Paul Hewson, to whom the album was dedicated following his accidental overdose death. Having been dropped from Mushroom Records after the first two Dots albums, Kelly had to borrow money to make Post, which he recorded with Sherbet guitarist Clive Shakespeare. The result was bare-bones, Kelly’s acoustic guitar and vocals embellished with some tasteful electric guitar work from Steve Connolly, the odd burst of sax, and little more. Lyrically it’s threaded with autobiographical references: “Adelaide” reflects on Kelly’s upbringing and his father’s passing before delivering a final kiss-off to the city (“All the king’s horses, all the king’s men/Wouldn’t drag me back again”). “From St Kilda to Kings Cross” is timely given his recent move from Melbourne’s beachside suburb, and namechecks local landmarks such as Oxford Street, Sydney Harbour and his beloved St Kilda Esplanade (“I’d give you all of Sydney Harbour, all that land, all that water, for that one sweet promenade”). “Blues for Skip” is an account of writer’s block set to a haunting, Nebraska-esque backing; “Incident on South Dowling” is a harrowing account of the consequences of addiction; “Standing on the Street of Early Sorrows” is a wistful song to a former crush named Julie. Upon release, Post failed to set the world alight commercially, but it is the sound of a songwriter finding his voice and place in the world, setting the foundation for the accolades and success that would come. As Kelly would sing many years later, from little things, big things grow.
Artist Playlists
- The musical legacy of Australia's prolific, gifted and restless songwriting talent.
- Get to know the songs penned by one of Australia's greatest storytellers.
- Listen to the hits performed on the iconic singer-songwriter's tour.
Live Albums
Compilations
Appears On
About Paul Kelly
Over his nearly five-decade career, roots-rock troubadour Paul Kelly has become one of Australia’s most iconic storytellers, earning nine Gold records and 14 Top 10 albums along the way. ∙ Recorded on a shoestring budget, his 1985 solo debut, Post, won Kelly comparisons to Bruce Springsteen as well as Album of the Year honors from Rolling Stone Australia. ∙ His 1986 release, Gossip—named one of the Top 50 Australian Albums of all time by The Age—featured the breakout tracks “Before Too Long” and “Darling It Hurts,” a US Rock chart hit. ∙ The Australasian Performing Right Association ranked the hit ballad “To Her Door,” from his 1987 album, Under the Sun, one of the Top 30 Australian Songs. ∙ Yothu Yindi’s 1991 new wave protest classic “Treaty,” which Kelly cowrote, was the first single by a largely Aboriginal group to hit the Australian charts and was also a dance club smash in the US. ∙ Kelly has won many awards for his work as a score composer, including three for the acclaimed 2001 musical One Night the Moon, in which he, his wife, and their daughter also star. ∙ Country star Kasey Chambers was among those who performed his songs on the 2002 Paul Kelly tribute album, The Women At The Well, naming him an inspiration for her own career. ∙ Four of his 16 ARIA Awards came from 2017’s Life Is Fine, his first album to hit No. 1 in Australia and a throwback to the eclectic pop-rock sound that marked his earliest hits. ∙ In 1997, he was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, and 20 years later, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia, an honor given for extraordinary achievements and service to the country.
- GENRE
- Singer/Songwriter