Michael Bublé had a lot to share in the
first five minutes of a recent video chat. He hates having to use the bathroom
at a movie theater because the idea of missing a crucial plot point is
stressful. The creamy vegetable soup he apologized for eating on camera — not
great. He also did not care for “The Matrix Resurrections,” the 2021
installment of the sci-fi franchise; that said, he loves Keanu Reeves, who
lives on his street in Los Angeles. Although they’ve never met, every time
Bublé and his family pass the actor’s house, they say, out loud, “Hi, Keanu.”
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“He’s a Canadian, too,” the singer pointed out. “So
there’s this giant urge to go, ‘Hey, we’re connected.’”
Bublé, who turned 46 last fall, has built his career
off of such immediate accessibility. Perhaps you’ve seen him on one of his
televised
Christmas specials, where he sings holiday songs alongside stars like
Barbra Streisand, Jimmy Fallon, and Kermit the Frog. Maybe you’ve watched his
many appearances on “The View,” “The X Factor,” “30 Rock,” or “Sesame Street,”
or just about any talk show you can think of. The traditional showbiz
entertainer is a disappearing breed, but Bublé, an exceptionally congenial
singer who can seamlessly slot himself into any song, room, or situation, is
built in this classical mode.
Bublé is most
famous for reinterpreting other people’s songs. His tastes draw from a deep
pool of eras and genres:
Dean Martin, Louis Prima,
the Bee Gees, Nat King Cole,
Justin Timberlake, the Drifters, and many, many more. (He has, improbably,
tackled the theme from the “Spider-Man” cartoon.) On “Higher,” his new album
out March 25, he belts “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” which was
popularized by Vera Lynn in 1940, and directly follows it with “Make You Feel
My Love,” a 1997 Bob Dylan song also notably covered by Adele in 2008.
The through-line
for these seemingly disparate selections is his buoyant and mellifluous voice,
capable of roping any and all material into the realm of genuine romance.
Bublé’s earnest commitment to rendering songs written for many generations of
lovers has won him cross-demographic popularity. He has released four albums
that have gone to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and has sold north of 70
million records around the world, despite having never aligned with
contemporary pop trends at any point in his career.
“It’s hard to categorize what I do; people would
like to, and I’ve fought it my whole life,” he said very matter-of-factly. “I
categorize myself as a soul singer who loves the great American songbook but
loves writing pop songs. It’s a very strange place to live.”
Bublé’s passion for the classics was fomented during
his childhood in Burnaby, British Columbia. His grandfather, a plumber, would
play songs from the ’40s and ’50s and explain their history to Bublé, who “fell
in love with the depth of what it meant to that generation.” At the time, he
was a self-described “nerdy kid” with “no girlfriends” and said his growing
interest in this music was a means of feeling unique.
His intent on pursuing a singing career through an
off-market style of jazzy big band music led him down some winding paths. The
nightclub gigs were “the good ones,” he said; more humbling were the cruise
ships and shopping mall performances, and worst of all were the singing telegrams,
where for $20 he might sing for a lucky birthday girl at the Canadian
restaurant chain White Spot.
In 2000, Bublé was hired to perform at the wedding
of a daughter of Brian Mulroney, a former prime minister of Canada, and met
producer David Foster there. Eventually, he persuaded Foster to sign him to his
Warner subsidiary label, with the caveat that Bublé had to personally raise the
budget to make a new album. The result was the 2003 LP “Michael Bublé,” which
placed multiple singles on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts and
ultimately went platinum.
When he broke through, Bublé was approaching 30 —
young for the world, but not the music industry. While some record executives
paled at his age, one bonus was that he was ready to meet his moment with proper
humility, when it finally came. “I was so late to this party, that I was
already who I was,” he said. The years of grinding had also inculcated a
relentless work ethic that, in retrospect, came with trade-offs. “I was blinded
to anything that wasn’t the ascension of a career — becoming the greatest
musician, the greatest songwriter, the greatest entertainer,” he said.
“Everything I did was going toward that goal, and I never stopped to smell the
roses.”
He missed friends’ birthdays and weddings; he said
he rarely explored the cities where he would perform. Greater success followed,
both professionally and personally: In 2011, he married Argentine actress
Luisana Lopilato and released “Christmas,” a record of holiday songs that
remains the bestselling of his career. But when his commercial momentum
momentarily flagged with “Nobody but Me” in 2013, “it was the first time that I
probably had ever felt a sense of panic,” he said, pausing to let the thought
sink in. “I felt like my false self had started to get the best of me — I
started to doubt myself and who I was and what I wanted to do.”
In 2016, he learned that his eldest son, Noah, then
three years old, had a rare form of liver cancer. “I just remember thinking
that for the first time, I could see everything completely clearly,” Bublé
said. “That’s when I started to have a much healthier relationship with this
thing that I do — this person you become when you go on tour.” (After months of
chemotherapy, Noah went into remission.) Bublé started paying closer attention
to his fitness so that he could better maintain the stamina required for long
performances; he also allowed himself to open up the creative process, after
what he called a “micromanaging” approach to his earlier work.
Although Bublé described the “sense of anxiety and
dread” that comes with every album cycle, there were bigger things to think
about. He pointed out, his voice turning soft, that the week of our interview
also marked five years of clean cancer scans for Noah. He emphasized his appreciation
for all he has been able to do, and acknowledged this sounded like a cliché.
But he said he was still motivated to find his audience, regardless of how
trends change or the methods we use to listen to music evolve.
“You just have to find a way to satisfy that
hunger,” he said. “I can never just expect that they’re going to stick me on
the radio.”
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