For more than two decades, Australia’s humble, homegrown roots and reggae scene had been nourished by the sounds of The Beautiful Girls. While the stage name has become an enigmatic tease of the dynamic behind the music, The Beautiful Girls – despite its plurality – is a one-man show, guided by the self-effacing singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mat McHugh. 

The Beautiful Girls has always been about music that is authentic and homely, a self-soothing practice that never circled in on fame, numbers or money. His immediately resonant songwriting, diverse fusion of dub, folk, roots, reggae, jazz and hip-hop, and coastal-soaked, palm tree-shaded world building took listeners to a place beyond their current reality; one bathed in saltwater and sand. It’s for this reason that his 2005 album We’re Already Gone went on to become a milestone project in Australian reggae history. At the time, We’re Already Gone earned nominations for ARIA, APRA and Triple J, hit #1 on the AIR charts, cracked the ARIA Top 20 and landed in the Top 10 in the U.S. Billboard Reggae charts. The Beautiful Girls’ intimate storytelling no longer resonated just in the insular comfort of Australia’s music scene, it travelled internationally, and quickly.

“I'm still pretty baffled by the whole thing, to be honest,” said The Beautiful Girls over Zoom.

“I never really had a grand ambition or a plan or anything. I never really wanted to kind of have this life. But I think, and that's probably for most of us, we just end up wherever we end up and deal with what's in front of us,”

“It just kind of blew up really quickly, and then every small decision in front of me, I tried to make the right choice with the right motivations, and then your path just kind of rolls out. Then you find yourself somewhere, and it's like, how did I find myself here? What a strange place,”

“I've just tried to ask what's more important to me. Music's important. But music is kind of personal, it's like diaries. It’s like photographs to me. But what's more important is how to go about things. What kind of choices do you make and what motivations drive those choices.”

The rapidly expansive reach of We’re Already Gone took The Beautiful Girls on international tours, and brought in a worldwide community of dedicated, loyal listeners who felt enriched by the music. Twenty years later, the album still holds utmost longevity. From its melodic trumpet opening on the title track to the moody drum outro on No Wrong, No Right, We’re Already Gone has the ability to sustain many lifetimes.

For The Music, we chat to The Beautiful Girls about the twenty years that have gone by, remastering We’re Already Gone and taking the project on the road this upcoming May, June and July.

When you're put into a position where something massive has happened for you [like blowing up], you start to find yourself in a lot of predicaments. Did you ever feel like you didn't know where to go, or were you always someone to roll with the punches and let life run its course?

Great question. Often I felt like I didn't know where to go, because you kind of have no road map or no plan, then you’re just reacting to what's directly in front of you. And then when things happen, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of new people pop out of nowhere, and everyone has an opinion on what you should do and how you should move, and who you should work with. And there's all different kinds of intentions that come out, and opportunists arrive. I think the thing is going through it all for so long, you kind of gain confidence in your own ability to be yourself. There's a big period at the beginning where there's a lot of self doubt and imposter syndrome, and feeling like, why did I get so lucky and a bunch of friends that I consider to be far more talented than myself, didn't. And then you get through that, and you just kind of accept the good graces you've been given, and try to act authentically. I feel like that's all you could ever do. And whatever happens, happens beyond that.

100%. At the core of it, you're only human as well, so you can only do what's in your own capabilities. I was going through your Instagram and I came across a post where you were reminiscing on the years gone by, all these shows that you've done, and the places that you've traveled, and how life is completely different now, where you're doing school pickups looking after your son. What are you thinking about when you look back on those two perspectives and your achievements?

I would give the whole music thing up to make my son breakfast for just one day. I'd hand it all in just for a second of that. I think they don't compare it all. It gets into existentialism, really, doesn't it? It's like, what are we even here for, and what's important to us in life. And maybe those two things are different. I've seen a lot of different sides of life. A lot of the things that people chase, like fame, money, influence and power, I feel that stuff is an illusion. I feel like it has no real weight to it, and it has no real meaning. It's a game. It's a game that's just loaded with traps. I think the things that really matter are right in front of us. It’s the people that we love and our family and living a simple, honorable life, and that's it. The rest of the stuff doesn't mean that much to me.

It’s just background noise more than anything, right?

Yeah. It's a beautiful way to spend some time on earth. It's a very lucky thing to be able to express feelings and make some music out of nothing that people want to, you know, participate in. That's very special and I don't take that for granted for a second. I feel amazed that that's an opportunity that I've been given. But I also don't have much real pride in that, you know. I just feel gratitude, and I don't feel it defines me as a person. I think there's other things I find more important, 100%.

Just last week, a remastered, 20th anniversary version of We’re Already Gone was released on streaming platforms which is really exciting. Tell me about the process of re-releasing this album and wanting to commemorate 20 years of this project in this way.

For me, this record was the first kind of proper, considered artistic statement as The Beautiful Girls. The very first album was done, recorded and mixed in like three hours. It was intended to be a demo tape, and it was kind of scrappy and thrown together. The next record Learn Yourself I feel like had great intent, but it was very much a record of its time. It was kind of the first time in my life where people had started singing along to some songs, and I thought, well, let's keep that ball rolling. And I leaned into the sound and the spirit of the time. As a writer, it was more influenced by wanting to keep putting coals on that particular fire. But then by the time We’re Already Gone came, we'd been in it all for a couple of years. We had success, we had sold out shows, and things were going great, and I was kind of bristling against it. I was like, man, I don't feel super authentic. I feel like we've pitched a ride on some train that we didn't have a ticket on. 

So this one, I was pretty determined to just kind of make it an artistic statement that put us in our own realm, in our own world. Just mash all the things together that I grew up listening to and the sounds that I was immersed in, and it was kind of pushed back from the musicians in the band. When the album was released, there were some people scratching their heads because it wasn't probably what they expected or wanted. But over time, going back to it and revisiting it and remastering it, it really stands up like that. For me, it feels honest and it feels unique and original, and for me, it's the first great The Beautiful Girls record, arguably the best one. So it's great to go back and hear it in all of its imperfections. I can just hear the motivation and and the reasoning behind it, and just giving it a bit of a spruce up. It's like getting your old photos and wiping the dust off them.

And obviously it has longevity to it. Fans are constantly coming back to it, and the hunger for this album still exists. How does that feel to know that it exists in a timeless lifetime?

It feels great, that was part of the motivation. For me, a good song is something where if it's from 1970 I still feel like it is an amazing song in 2025. I feel like a good song done well is timeless, and I gravitate towards that in all forms of design and art. It's an aesthetic that appeals to me and I'm drawn to. The guitars I play are kind of prototype designs from the 50s, or the car I drive or the watch I wear, it's all just very timeless and functional. It gets to the point without any artifice, you know, and that's always a motivation for creating. I want it to be able to hold up in another 20 years. I want it to still be good in 20 years. And if it's good, it's good and it stays good. I think people might forget about things because the world is noisy and there's constant things arriving. But if something's really good. It just stays good. The passage of time doesn't make a true thing less true.

You're embarking on a tour to celebrate 20 years of this album. How does it feel to bring this project on the road in its entirety, and play it for fans old and new, and just get back into the swing of things?

We haven't toured for a little bit now, so it's exciting to just get back and play and dust off the cobwebs and dig into this album again. It's been really fun. We've been kind of getting in there and deconstructing it to figure out how all the pieces go together. And we want to really try and be super faithful to how the record sounds. Obviously we’ve had some experience since we recorded that record, but it's great. It's been fun to get back into it, and that's part of the thing. Picking up the guitar parts again and playing them and singing them. It's like, oh, this is actually really good, I'm really happy that I wrote this song, I forgot about it, but it's actually really good. So that's been an exciting thing for me to kind of rediscover it. And it kind of gives you these weird flashbacks that photographs can't do, like I'm immediately transported back to who I was when I sat there writing it or recording it. It takes you back into this headspace and this kind of feeling, which is amazing. It's magic.

That's awesome. At the end of last year, you mentioned on Instagram about wanting to tour internationally again. Is that something that's still in the works?

Yeah, everything's constantly in the works. I have long ago taken any pressure off of anything plans-wise. The more I've let go of them, the more things seem to happen, you know? And it's really an idea that we all want to do. For the longest time, when the band was at its peak, we were just in America. We were there for 10 years, constantly on the road in America, and haven't been back for a long time. So that's something that I'm definitely interested in. And getting back to Brazil and getting back to Europe, like it's a big world, and there's only so many hours in the day, you know? And it just has to feel right, it has to come together right. I'm not into it for chasing some kind of attention or fame or anything. If it were to happen, I would want it to be special and be something that was meaningful to us and to the people that came so it just needs to be done right. But it's definitely a potential, I'll say that.

Aside from that, what's next for The Beautiful Girls?

There hasn't been a new record for a long time, but I’m constantly writing records. There is a bigger conversation there, but I kind of got pretty burnt out on delivering music as a product, and I got burnt out on expectations and opinions, and I just lost my relationship with music a little bit. I lost track of why it was so magical and meaningful to me, it saved my life. Growing up, pretty much having lost a parent young, music was my refuge, and I kind of had turned my back a bit on that, because I started worrying about paying bills and doing all this other stuff. So I have been making music now for myself for a few years, and I've really, really enjoyed it, and I'm trying to get my head around what to do with that. Maybe I just feel like releasing music for music's sake, not even attached to either of those names, just putting it out and letting it be out there and see what happens. I feel like if you do things from the right place, then the right things eventually happen. So I'm trying to navigate what to do with this backlog of music that I've recorded, but something will happen.

Until then, The Beautiful Girls are embarking on the We’re Already Gone: 20th Anniversary Tour over May, June and July. Tickets can be purchased here. Find all the touring information below.

The Beautiful Girls We’re Already Gone 20th Anniversary Album Tour Dates 2025

Friday, May 2 – Hotel Brunswick, Brunswick Heads, NSW

Saturday, May 3 – Miami Marketta, Gold Coast, QLD

Friday, May 9 – Hotel Steyne, Manly, NSW

Saturday, May 10 – King Street Warehouse, Newcastle, NSW

Friday, May 23 – Indian Ocean Hotel, Perth, WA

Saturday, May 24 – The River, Margaret River, WA

Friday, May 30 – Corner Hotel, Melbourne, VIC

Saturday, May 31 – Torquay Hotel, Torquay, VIC

Friday, June 6 – The Gov, Adelaide, SA

Friday, June 13 – Lefty's Music Hall, Brisbane, QLD

Saturday, June 14 – Kings Beach Tavern, Kings Beach, QLD

Friday, June 20 – Oxford Arts Factory, Sydney, NSW

Thursday, July 17 – Tanks Arts Centre, Cairns, QLD

Friday, July 18 – The Warehouse, Townsville, QLD