INTERVIEW:It's beginning to feel a lot like . . . time to record a pension fund-boosting album. Michael Bublé tells KEVIN COURTNEYabout recording Christmas favourites in an LA summer, and why he's more than a covers crooner
'BAH, HUMBUG!” Michael Bublé is doing probably the worst impersonation of an Irish Scrooge you’ll hear this Christmas. “Bah, humbug! Christmas is for losers!”
It’s a strange sentiment from someone who’s about to release a new album of seasonal songs. But then, if you’d had to spend the summer in the sweltering heat of Los Angeles, recording a Christmas album, you might be feeling a little unfestive too. I try to cheer him up by teaching him the Irish for “Merry Christmas to you”.
“It sounds like no-luck sonofabitch,” I explain. “No-luck sonofabitch?” he replies. “Sounds Chinese.”
But it'll take more than "2,000 degrees" to dampen Bublé's seasonal spirit. The Canadian crooner has been a huge fan of all things Christmassy ever since he was a boy growing up in the small town of Burnaby on the Pacific coast. Next week, Bublé releases his seasonal album, imaginatively entitled Christmas. For the 36-year-old singer, it's the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition to make "the quintessential Christmas record, that will live on far after I'm gone". With a career that has already notched up sales in excess of 30 million albums, it's a safe bet that this CD will end up in more than a handful of Christmas stockings.
“I know what that holiday means to me and my family, and for me to even think that I’m gonna have the opportunity to be invited into millions of people’s homes all over the world to get to share this very personal and special time with them is a huge honour to me, and it means a hell of a lot to me.
"Christmas was this really important time of the year for us. My mom and dad made it really special for us kids. But there was only one record they would play, for two and a half months, and that was Bing Crosby's White Christmasalbum. It introduced me to jazz. It introduced me to music, and so this was the record of my dreams to make."
Bublé’s got a lot to be thankful for. Since he released his debut album in 2003, his star has risen to dizzying heights – he’s a jazz singer with rock-star attitude and a pop icon’s pulling power.
“You know what’s weird? I do love all the classic stuff, obviously, but I liked AC/DC, U2, Guns’N’Roses, Pearl Jam . . . I liked all that. I liked Dr Dre. I was just a normal kid. I think I idolised Michael Jackson more than I ever idolised Frank Sinatra. But I was built to do this. My voice sounded the way it sounded, and that kind of music really moved me.”
With his last album, 2009's Crazy Love, surpassing five million sales worldwide, Bublé is now firmly established as a world-class interpreter of jazz standards, show tunes and pop classics. The album featured a winning selection of songs cherry-picked from a variety of sources, from lounge favourites such as Cry Me A Riverand Stardustto the R&B gold of Georgia on my Mind and the 1970s rock of The Eagles' Heartache Tonight. And you have to be brave (or foolish) to tackle Van Morrison's Crazy Love – which Bublé does with his usual aplomb.
Along with his album sales, his live audience has swelled to enormodome proportions, culminating in two sold-out nights in Dublin’s Aviva Stadium in front of 55,000 people a night, “which were the greatest two nights of my life. That was unbelievable. We had so much fun in Dublin. We went out on the street and it was a mob. I’d never felt so famous before in my life. It was thrilling. We jumped into a cab and took off and we thought it was just the coolest day of our lives. It was just awesome.”
Obama drank the Guinness when he visited. The Queen didn’t. Did Bublé drink the Guinness? “Of course I did. Unfortunately for me, after we did the second show, I got absolutely shit-faced.”
To be fair, Ireland has always given the Canuck crooner a warm welcome. We may provide a small fraction of his worldwide income, but per capita, we're probably Bublé's biggest supporters. Crazy Lovebroke the record, previously held by U2, for the most albums sold here in one week. So Bublé can at least count on his Irish fans to fork out for his new CD – despite the recession.
And they'll certainly get their money's worth. Bublé is aiming high on this collection, going straight for the big songs that evoke everybody's childhood Christmas. "I do Jingle Bellswith The Puppini Sisters, White Christmaswith Shania Twain. I sing Ave Mariain Latin, I sing Felice Navidadwith a Spanish star named Thalía, and I have 12,000 people at my concert in Mexico singing along on the record. I do Santa Baby, but I changed the lyrics to Santa Buddy."
Add in such favourites as Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holly Jolly Christmasand It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas,and it looks like that scratchy old Bing Crosby LP won't be getting many spins this season.
“Yeah. You know, man, if I’ve done this right, and I think I have, there’s no reason why in the next 10 years that I shouldn’t sell 20 million copies.”
That’s his pension sorted out, then. Bublé is also looking forward to sharing Christmas with his future kids, but any woman hoping to provide him with same has to get past his new wife, the Argentinian actor Luisana Lopalito. He had previously dated British actor Emily Blunt, but when he met Lopalito backstage at a gig in Buenos Aires, he knew this was the real deal.
“My wife is an incredibly beautiful, compassionate, loyal, wonderful, scary woman. We got married in April. It was a really nice wedding. But on the third day of our honeymoon, we looked at each other and went, ‘I think we made a mistake.’ We were walking along the street at Disney World in Florida, and we went, ‘I haate yoouuu, I haaaate yooouuuuu!’ Because for both of us it’s a little scary, you feel pressure, and omigod, how do I get out of this. But now we’re just so content and happy. My birthday is tomorrow, I’m gonna take off and go be with my girl and her family for a couple of weeks, and when she’s not making movies and stuff she comes to live with me either in Vancouver or Los Angeles.”
If Bublé wanted for anything else, it's respect for his talent, and acknowledgment that he's not just a karaoke crooner. Not only does he choose his tracks with care, but he also writes his own songs, most of which have been hits, including Everything, Lostand I Haven't Met You Yet.
“It’s funny how I’ve written all these hit songs, and I’ll still read reviews and the guy will say, ‘all he does is cover songs’, and I’ll think, how f**king hard is it to go and do your research and see.
“I try to be a well-rounded artist and not just cover but write songs, so sometimes it gets a little frustrating when I hear people say, ‘Oh god, this Sinatra wannabe, all he does is covers’.
“People say, like, what’s the difference between you and Sinatra? Well, here’s the difference. I was born in 1975 and it gave me the opportunity to study life’s work of great jazz singers and pop singers, but great rock singers too. You really get to study and to steal from as many places as possible. And if you really like music, you like every kind. Listen, I don’t care what genre it is. I don’t care if it’s rock, pop, rap, RB, opera. If a song is a good song, it’s a good song.”
Brown Thomas and BT2 will be exclusively stocking a deluxe edition of Michael Bublé’s Christmas, from October 21st. It includes bonus tracks and a European exclusive DVD featuring behind the scenes footage of the making of the album
