Most ARIA Music Awards nominations

Paul Kelly (Australia) received 60 nominations for the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Music Awards between 1987 and 2020. The singer-songwriter/guitarist's two nominations in 2020, for Best Jazz Album and Best Australian Live Act, took him one nomination ahead of John Farnham, who collected 59 between 1987 and 2015. Kelly, a 16-time winner at the annual awards show, was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1997.

Kelly won his first trophy – for Best Video – at the 2nd ARIA Music Awards in 1988. His other awards include Best Male Artist (1997-98 and 2017) and Best Adult Contemporary Album (…Nothing but a Dream, 2002; Ways & Means, 2004; Goin’ Your Way (with Neil Finn), 2014; Life Is Fine, 2017; and Nature, 2019). The genre-shifting musician has also won three times in the Best Original Soundtrack/Cast/Show Album category (2002, 2006 and 2013), picked up Best Classical Album for Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds (with James Ledger, Alice Keath and Seraphim Trio) in 2019, and in 2020 he won Best Jazz Album for Please Leave Your Light On (with Paul Grabowsky). He’s also been nominated in country and blues and roots categories, and in 2019 he became the first musician to be nominated in three different genres (classical, adult contemporary, blues and roots) in a single year. For eight consecutive years between 1995 and 2002, Kelly was nominated for Best Male Artist – a category he appeared in 18 times between 1987 and 2019.

Kelly has released 27 studio albums (including Forty Days and Please Leave Your Light On in 2020) but had to wait until 2017 (when he was 62 years old) for chart-topping success in Australia with Life Is Fine. He returned to No.1 with Nature (2018) and Songs from the South 1985-2019 – Paul Kelly’s Greatest Hits (2019).