Paul Anthony Kelly

Paul Anthony Kelly is an Australian singer‑songwriter whose career has quietly stretched over five decades — a lifetime of songs, stories and small revelations. The son of a pianist and the grandson of travelling opera singers, he began at the piano in Adelaide, swapped to trumpet after hearing Louis Armstrong, then drifted to guitar. It wasn’t planned. It just happened.

Across more than 350 songs and 30 studio albums, Kelly has built a reputation for poetic storytelling — about love and death, family and place — and for using silence as much as sound. He’s never chased a single smash hit; instead he’s delivered a steady stream of well-crafted work. The album Nature earned a 7.0 review for its range and quiet confidence. November will see Seventy, his 30th studio record, with singles like “Rita Wrote A Letter” and a national tour nomination alongside Lucinda Williams and Fanny Lumsden for 2025. Small triumphs. Big ones, too.

Theatre and acting are part of the same landscape: QMC theatre arts studies, dozens of local productions performed and directed, and a Best Actor nomination at IAC BIAFF 2013 for the short film Addict. More recently he beat a thousand-plus auditionees to portray JFK Jr. in Ryan Murphy’s American Love Story — a Hollywood moment that surprised him as much as anyone.

He’s done some modelling (The Society Management — yes, 6’2″, 32‑inch waist, size 11 shoes), appeared in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition and keeps an IMDb page for the industry types. What began as curiosity became craft. What began as a boy at a piano became a voice people recognise. Still curious. Still writing.