LATEST NEWS

REGISTER FOR PRE-SALE TICKETS HERE

In 2025, The Beautiful Girls are hitting the road for a massive Australian National Tour to celebrate 20 years of their iconic album, We’re Already Gone. Spanning capital cities and regional stops, this tour will be a must-see for fans old and new.

For the first time ever, the band will perform We’re Already Gone in its entirety, alongside some of their biggest hits. With a six-piece lineup bringing the songs to life, expect an unforgettable night of sun-soaked melodies, reggae grooves, and deep nostalgia.

Originally released on July 4, 2005, We’re Already Gone became a Gold-certified classic, racking up over 50 million streams and earning nominations for ARIA, APRA, and Triple J awards. Featuring standout tracks like Ashes and Long Way Home, the album hit #1 on the AIR charts, cracked the ARIA Top 20, and even landed in the Top 10 on the U.S. Billboard Reggae charts.

Don’t miss your chance to celebrate this milestone with The Beautiful Girls live on stage.

Spotify Presale: Tuesday, March 11 @ 9am AEST

Artist Presale: Wednesday, March 12 @ 9am AEST

General On Sale: Thursday, March 13 @ 9am AEST

Gold Coast Crew! It’s been a while…We can’t wait to be back at Miami Marketta with Pete Murray this July for Surface Festival!

May, 2020.

Hi everyone,

I can't even list all the things that have happened in the 5 years (!!!) since I released my last music.

It's been a pretty crazy journey to arrive here, but I'M HERE.

I'm super proud of the new music I've been making and I'm excited to let you know that I will be releasing a brand new song called 'LAGOON' on May 31.

If you'd like to pre-save / pre-add the song then please CLICK HERE, it would mean a lot to me.

I hope you're all doing ok and receiving and giving love as best as you're able.

Hopefully I get to see you all soon.

M

🌴Seaside Highlife: Greatest Hits, Volume 1🌴(Die!Boredom/MGM)

Seaside Highlife: Greatest Hits (volume 1) is available WORLDWIDE NOW!!
Also, VINYL ORDERS ARE NOW OPEN. This is a limited release. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. A double album selection of our best songs fully remastered onto tape with photos and artwork spanning the band’s entire career. It looks and sounds amazing 🔥🔥🔥. Thanks so much for supporting Independent Original music 🌊🌴🌈 #thebeautifulgirls #seasidehighlife #greatesthits

Click here to visit The Beautiful Girls website and order the album!

SEASIDE HIGHLIFE GREATEST HITS TOUR 2020 🔥

SAT 04 JAN - BAY CENTRAL TAVERN - PIABLA, QLD
SUN 05 JAN - KINGSCLIFF BEACH TAVERN - KINGSCLIFF, NSW
FRI 10 JAN - PELLY BAR - FRANKSTON, VIC
SAT 11 JAN - TORQUAY HOTEL - TORQUAY, VIC
THURS 16 JAN - THE BASEMENT - CANBERRA, ACT
FRI 17 JAN - THE ENTRANCE LEAGUES CLUB - NSW
SAT 18 JAN - QUEENS WHARF HOTEL - NEWCASTLE, NSW
FRI 24 JAN - THE FACTORY - SYDNEY, NSW
SAT 25 JAN - NARRABEEN RSL - NARRABEEN, NSW
THURS 30 JAN - THE RIVER - MARGARET RIVER, WA
FRI 31 JAN - FREO SOCIAL - FREMANTLE WA
SAT 01 FEB - THE GOV - ADELAIDE SA
FRI 07 FEB - OTHERWISE - TOWNSVILLE QLD
SAT 08 FEB - TANKS ARTS CENTRE - CAIRNS, QLD
FRI 14 FEB - THE TRIFFID - BRISBANE, QLD
SAT 15 FEB - THE NORTHERN - BYRON BAY, NSW
SUN 16 FEB - COOLANGATTA HOTEL - COOLANGATTA, QLD
FRI 21 FEB - UNI BAR - HOBART, TAS
SAT 22 FEB - CORNER HOTEL - RICHMOND, VIC

Seaside Highlife: Greatest Hits, Volume 1 (Die!Boredom/MGM)

CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE ALBUM

“I thought it would be easy to put together a ‘best of’ – how hard could that be?” chuckles Mat McHugh, singer, guitarist, songwriter and founder of the project he launched nearly 20 years ago to which he gave the name The Beautiful Girls. Well as it turned out, putting together a vinyl double-album that represented the very best of the recorded output of The Beautiful Girls from across five albums and three EPs proved a little harder than he ever imagined.

“Often it came down to a choice between what was a popular track and what was a track that artistically I felt held more weight,” he explains. “I threw the selection process out on social media and asked for other people’s opinion, which was probably a really bad thing to do in hindsight because everyone had their reasons for one thing or another. But it’s been a really good exercise. I’m not the kind of person who looks in the rear view mirror too much. When you’re in the thick of it you don’t really view what you’ve done for what it is. You just want to move to the next thing as quickly as possible. But having a bit of space to look back on it, it was good.”

Right from the beginning, soon after he returned from overseas in 2001 and began recording the songs he’d been writing on a trusty four-track recorder, McHugh has seen The Beautiful Girls as a collective rather than a band, a songwriting project for which he’d bring in players as each set of songs required. “Those tapes ended up in the hands of a couple of friends,” he remembers, “who agreed to come and play some shows with me. That was the beginning The Beautiful Girls.

“When I write a song, particularly because I perform all the stuff on these tracks, I just take so many hats on and off. Like, ‘Today my job is the bass player and the keyboard player,’ and that’s it. That’s all I think about, and I try and reference bass players and keyboard players that I might like. There are just so many artistic and aesthetic decisions to make at every point that you have this schizophrenic jumping in and out of roles all the time. And then there are the lyrics, which are a whole other perspective, being representative of a kind of sound and a style and a place and a time.”

For McHugh, at the core of The Beautiful Girls is that sense of a place and a time and the sound that best represents them. “I’d been playing around forever but The Beautiful Girls as a project became well-known relatively quickly off a certain set of circumstances,” he admits, “the timing and the zeitgeist or whatever, because it was all pointing towards this roots music explosion. There were the John Butlers and the Jack Johnsons and we were really kind of in that. The first record I must admit I was so happy that anyone was listening to the music I was making for the first time in my life that I just wanted to stay there, and you can hear that in the early stuff. After that first record, I felt I’d been elevated to a certain position where a lot of musicians who I feel are far more accomplished than me hadn’t reached, so I was determined I would work my arse off to try and deserve it. That’s when the graft, the hard work came in and I really tried to differentiate this music and the songs from anything anybody else was doing, anywhere really but particularly here in Australia. It just became more and more powerful as it went on. It would get deeper lyrically, production-wise and in everything. It’s been a crazy journey.”

Across those albums and EPs, The Beautiful Girls have created quite the diverse body of work, but it all somehow fits together within the genre McHugh created for himself – Seaside Highlife.

“I kind of coined that term because, for me, that was the number one goal. To have a sound to call our own. Pretty early on in the piece I felt it wouldn’t be authentic to pretend this music came out of Brooklyn or Brixton or anywhere else. It was born of where it was born. Our first shows actually began by jacking into the council power supply at the skate bowl in Avalon, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, throwing massive street parties. My heart is so wrapped up in the culture of east coast Australian beach life, the culture into which I was born and raised, that I thought – okay, what does that sound like? What does my culture that I was immersed in sound like, if I was to mash it all together and make it into some sort of sonic recipe? Punk Rock, Reggae, Hip Hop, Dub, Acoustic, Soul – music that lifts you up and takes you out of your immediate surroundings. I know for me personally, growing up in a single-parent low-income suburb by the beach, the music and the art the culture that our crew of friends created around ourselves elevated us and helped us to transcend the things we really needed some escape from. It made our little World seem a little more magical. We wanted a place we could escape to – no racism, no fashion, no division, no hopelessness, no bullshit, no fake glamour, no violence at home, no minimum-wage jobs, no career anxiety, no rock stars, no judgements, no hatred. Just friendship and music and love. To me, that was the only dream – still is – Seaside Highlife. More life.”

“There are a lot of bands that have kind of come out of that sound that, twenty years after the fact, are busy taking it to the World. Ocean Alley were on top of the Australian Hottest 100 just last year, Sticky Fingers are huge, Angus and Julia Stone were influenced through supporting us on their first ever tour – our earliest rhythm section eventually became their earliest rhythm section – and there are a lot of similarities in their early stuff. When we started, our sound just didn’t exist. Australia was Grunge and Rock and Roll ! So the whole landscape’s changed a lot and looking back on it all I feel like this music, and the art of The Beautiful Girls, has played a big role in all of that. Being staunchly independent and representative of a culture that sonically has had a big influence on a lot of acts, is rewarding after all this time. It feels nice to have had some kind of influence on the landscape.

“When we first went overseas people everywhere, in America and in Europe, Japan, Brazil, everywhere we went, would ask, ‘Where does this sound come from? What is this sound? What do you call it?’ I didn’t have a name for it back then but the first thing I would say, at every show we ever played was ‘We’re called The Beautiful Girls and we’re from the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia.’ That was my whole approach.”

In putting together the double-album, McHugh has essentially drawn three and sometimes four tracks from every release apart from the 2002 Goodtimes and 2004 Weight of the World EPs. So Side One features ‘Periscopes’, ‘Morning Sun’ and ‘On A Clear Day’ from the 2002 debut EP, Morning Sun, rounded out by ‘Blackbird’ and La Mar (The Ocean)’ from 2003’s debut album, Learn Yourself, which provides its title track and ‘Music’ to Side Two, alongside ‘We’re Already Gone’, ‘The Biggest Lie’ and ‘Let’s Take the Long Way Home’ from the 2005 album We’re Already Gone. Side Three delivers ‘I Thought About You’, ‘Spanish Town’ and ‘Sir, Your Fashion Has The Cold Heart of a Killer’ from 2007’s Ziggurats album, alongside ‘After All This Time’, ’10:10’ and ‘B Some Melody’ from 2010’s Spooks, which also provides ‘Don’t Wait’, opening Side Four, alongside three tracks – ‘Until My Kingdom Comes’, ‘Real Love’ and ‘#1 Stylee’ – from 2014’s Dancehall Days. The side is completed by an acoustic version of the most recent Beautiful Girls single, 2018’s ‘Beautiful World’.

“One of the hardest things,” McHugh explains, “was trying to squeeze it all in to fit onto the vinyl, because of the time constraints – 22 minutes a side. For the longest time people had been asking for vinyl. There are songs that were left behind that I was sad didn’t make it on there, but we’re looking at getting the back catalogue all done up and remastered on vinyl so they’ll all get their moment in the sun. The Beautiful Girls has never really been a ‘singles’ band. I have always approached each album by considering every song to be of equal importance, so when a time like this comes, picking favourites is nearly impossible. And then, taking into consideration the lyrical subject matter, the lyrical arc, what each song represents, the message each song had, it was a monumental task. What I really wanted to do with a ‘Greatest Hits’ is… I really wanted to create a good introduction to The Beautiful Girls for people and what better way than to have it on vinyl? If you’ve never heard of the band and want to hear it at its highest quality and best sound ever, this is the way.”

Pulling together material recorded in various studios under very different conditions over so many years required the ears of a master of the record mastering game, which sent McHugh to one of Australia’s best, William Bowden of King Willy Sound.

“I actually couldn’t believe how much difference he made. I would take on each project as a separate challenge. The first EP was recorded in three hours but by the time Spooks came around, the production started getting pretty intricate. Every album has been it’s own self-contained artistic experiment and recording challenge, so to make that all cohesive… I was sceptical because I thought, ‘How is it all going to hang together?’ Sonically it’s all pretty varied. We talked to a lot of people but William was up to the task, so we sent some stuff down to him in Tasmania and when I got it back I couldn’t believe it – an unbelievable difference. I asked him how he did it but he wouldn’t tell me! It definitely breathed new life into the whole thing and that lit a fire under me.”

In the end of course, it’s all about being true to yourself and to what you were feeling in that moment. “One hundred per cent and it’s not always so easy because your mind plays tricks on you. I would get to the end of particular albums and it would be such an isolated process, making these records, by design and by nature, that I’d kind of be on the brink of madness by the end, and I’d listen back to it and I’d lose all perspective. Overall I can feel the heart and soul in all of it. It feels like I meant it, and I know that all the decisions I made came from the right place, which from this distance is a nice feeling. I didn’t really concede too much; I did what I thought was right and I can hear and feel that, and that’s a rewarding victory. That’s probably the ultimate achievement for me I’d say.

“Seaside Highlife is representative of a particular era of the band and a stepping-off point for the next one. That’s why we put Volume One in the title. To top it off, the artwork features photos from right across The Beautiful Girls’ entire career. The first thing we did was design the vinyl cover artwork, because it adds so much to that whole experience of having it in your hands, feeling it and poring over the artwork. I wanted to make it something you’ll go back to again and again because it looks beautiful, it feels beautiful – a lot of love has gone into it. There’s a whole bunch of photos from across the twenty years that include everyone that’s been involved, pretty much – it just looks and sounds great. I’m very proud of it.”

MICHAEL SMITH

The Beautiful Girls – Seaside Highlife: Greatest Hits Volume I (Die! Boredom/MGM)

Side 1
Periscopes, Morning Sun, On A Clear Day, Blackbird, La Mar (The Ocean)

Side 2
Learn Yourself, Music, We’re Already Gone, The Biggest Lie I Ever Told, Let’s Take The Long Way Home

Side 3
I Thought About You, Spanish Town, Sir, Your Fashion Has The Cold Heart Of A Killer, After All This Time, 10_10, B Some Melody

Side 4
Don’t Wait, Until My Kingdom Comes, Real Love, #1 Stylee, Beautiful World (acoustic)

7TH DEC - THIS IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN! WE LOVE THIS LINEUP!
TICKETS HERE

AUG, 2019.

Hey guys,

Our 'The Beautiful Girls' Spotify page has nearly hit 100k followers!

I've nearly finished a new album and, this time, I will be releasing it under my own name.

I'd like to build up my Mat McHugh Spotify audience before it drops so please click 'FOLLOW' if you like what you hear.

And, please help keep independent music alive by sharing the link with your friends and anyone else you think might like this music.

I love you, be kind, keep going... ❤️🚀✨🌈

Mateo

www.matmchugh.com

So stoked to announce we will be headlining the Offbeat Festival this year! We are only playing 2 shows in the next 12 months and this is one of them!! Hit the link right here to grab your early bird tickets ...

March, 2019.

The BEAUTIFUL GIRLS are heading back to Western Australia !!

We've been busy in the studio working on new music and have decided to sneak out and show you guys what we're working on.

This June long Weekend we will be hitting the road for 4 intimate shows on the West Coast.

These shows will sell out FAST so hit the links below to grab yours before they're all gone ...

- TOUR DATES -

Thu 30 May: Prince Of Wales, Bunbury WA

http://bit.ly/TheBeautifulGirls_Bunbury

Fri 31 May: The River, Margaret River WA

http://bit.ly/TheBeautifulGirls_Margs

Sat 01 June: Bar1, Hillary's WA

http://bit.ly/TheBeautifulGirls_Hillarys

Sun 02 June: Freo Social Hall, Fremantle WA

http://bit.ly/TheBeautifulGirls_Freo

March, 2019.

Our MAT McHUGH meets the YUM YUM’s album just hit 5 million streams on @spotify!!

You guys are streaming my songs 200 thousand (and rising) times a month and the total streams have just hit 25 MILLION ⚡️⚡️⚡️ This is all music released independently and without any record label push. It’s all done by word of mouth and by you guys supporting me.

So, THANK YOU and I LOVE YOU.

Without your support I wouldn’t be able to make music and release it. I’m working on a new album and plan to make it the best one yet. x, Mateo ❤️🚀✨🌈

Jan, 2019.

Thanks to the AU Review for this Live Review: The Beautiful Girls + Bobby Alu + Pat Tierney – The Factory Theatre, Sydney (18.01.19)

Dec, 2018.

Hey Everyone,

On behalf of us here at Die!Boredom Records we want to wish you all a joyous Christmas and very happy New Year.

Thanks so much for all your support of 'The Beautiful Girls' and 'Mat McHugh' music throughout 2018.

You guys have streamed our songs nearly 30 million times, across all platforms, in the last 12 months alone (!). There is truly no way we can express how much that means. But, yeah, we love you.

Even better, 2019 will bring BRAND NEW MUSIC (and lots of other exciting news to be announced... stay tuned)

On the touring front, after sellout shows and much critical acclaim, The Beautiful Girls continue the final leg of their 'Beautiful World Australian Tour'  - featuring very special guest Bobby Alu ( ex-Xavier Rudd ) on drums and as main support.

Nov, 2018.

Hey Friends! News Update!

Tickets have been moving fast for The Beautiful Girls Australian Summer Tour!

⚡️Oz Tour Update⚡️
Due to popular demand we have just added a couple of extra shows.

WED 05 DEC - RAMSGATE HOTEL, HENLEY BEACH - SA
SUN 27 JAN - BAR 1, HILLARY'S - WA

SEE BELOW FOR TICKET LINKS AND WE RECOMMEND PURCHASING SOON SO YOU DON'T MISS OUT :)

In Other News...

A newly released  'Mat McHugh meets The Yum Yums' remix album is available online - as well a lyric video for the first single.

The album has been out exactly one month today and has already racked up over 4 million streams on Spotify! You can listen or purchase by clicking right here!

Follow Mat McHugh on Instagram here

Follow The Beautiful Girls on Instagram here