Michael Patrick Kelly is an Irish-American singer, musician and composer. Kelly was born in Dublin. He was a member of the pop and folk band The Kelly Family, one of the most commercially successful acts in Europe, with over 20 million records sold since the mid-1990s. After years in the public eye, Kelly released his debut solo album In Exile and shortly thereafter retired to a monastery in France. After six years he returned to the music business in 2011.

The Kelly Family is a European-American music group consisting of a multi-generational family, usually nine siblings who were joined occasionally on stage in their earlier years by their parents. They play a repertoire of rock, pop, and folk music, and sing in English, Spanish, German, and Basque. The group had chart and concert success around the world, predominantly in continental Europe - mainly in Germany, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and Portugal - and some in Ireland. They have sold over 20 million albums since the early 1980s and were ranked as the 6th most popular music act in Germany in the 1990s. Despite their American origins, the group is virtually unknown in the United States.