The Metaphysical Musician

SYDNEY: A shattering breakup prompted singer-songwriter Martyn Badoui on a path to spiritual awakening and musical reinvention. Now, he goes by the name Prophet Love. By Lachlan Bennett.

While the end of a relationship can often be traumatic, it’s can also be a time for transformation. It certainly was for singer-songwriter Martyn Badoui.

Badoui entered the commercial music scene in 2009 with the release of his debut EP Borderline Crazy. However, after a shattering breakup last year, Badoui decided to dramatically reinvent himself as a Prophet Love – a spiritual pop singer who writes metaphysical love songs and plays the ukulele.

“I guess it was something of a spiritual crisis or spiritual awakening,” Badoui tells SX. “I had a relationship that ended quite badly and it kind of forced me to look at myself, rather than [my partner], to see where the problems were. And it was from that I felt I had to change and, I guess, my music changed with me.”

In the aftermath of his breakup, Badoui began to bury himself in a range of philosophical texts, eventually leading him to develop his new sound and stage name.

This spiritual reinvention has been chronicled in Prophet Love’s upcoming EP Songs for the 5th Dimension, which he describes as “a collection of songs on the identities of love, but from a spiritual perspective”.

Arranged for ukulele, Gamelan percussion and a range of electronic instruments, Prophet Love’s music is characterised by Badoui’s sweeping, classically trained voice and the EP’s philosophical subject matter.

The new music will be debuted in Prophet Love’s upcoming cabaret show Cosmologies, which is being staged as part of this year’s performing arts program of the Mardi Gras Festival.

Badoui says the cabaret consists of series psychic episodes that will draw audiences back and forth through time and, like Prophet Love’s new EP, explores the changing identities of love.

“Cosmologies is about the many faces of love that we experience as we grow older and we learn about a deeper sort of love and the way that comes about from experiencing it from relationship to relationship,” he says.

Co-writing and directing Cosmologies are New York’s Jesse Archer, best known for writing and producing the 2010 gay film Violet Tendencies, as well as Matt Formatt, Prophet Love’s “right hand man” and couturier.

In addition to Prophet Love’s music, Cosmologies will also include Badoui’s unique rendition of Whitney Houston’s song ‘My Love is Your Love’ and see him sing a duet with Brisbane soprano Emma Dean.

[Image] New name, new outlook ... Prophet Love.

Prophet Love: Cosmologies, Sunday, February 24, 7.30pm, El Rocco Jazz Cellar, Kings Cross. Tix $25/$20 from www.mardigras.org.au