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           Bublé likes beds. He often cosies up with his grandparents and sings to them when they’re all lounging on a big bed. He is in jeans and a soft grey T-shirt, striped socks, pale brown eyes, and is not afraid to look at you. He is not afraid for you to see him. When we lie down he cuddles a pillow in front of him. I have seen fat people do that. He’s not fat. He is in part insecure and the rest of him is superbly relaxed.
He orders caviar and hot dog for his lunch. He giggles proudly. “This says everything about me.” He means it defines the extremes in his character.
His grandfather is full Italian and it is this heritage within him that encourages him to express love and anger loudly. It encourages passion without middle ground. He sings old standards, yet young people love him. It’s this very nature that has made him difficult to categorise. His albums are sold in the crooner section along with Frank Sinatra and the pop section along with Katy Perry.
He is now 36 with over 30 million album sales to date, making him the most successful male vocalist in the world. About three years ago there was a sea change in his career, a miracle really. He became proof that it was hip to be square. Crooning those old tunes and he couldn't be cooler. It’s not just grandparents who love him, it’s teenagers too. He is rather expert at embracing extremes.
The catalyst for this was extreme pain. Everything changed because his relationship with former fiancé, Oscar nominated Devil Wears Prada actress Emily Blunt, fell apart. He blamed himself. He went into therapy.
The last time we met he was giddy with love for Blunt and had just written the song Everything for her. ‘God. Everything has changed since then. I am not in love with Emily any more. I was with her brother Sebastian only a couple of days ago. I’m just in touch with him. It would be weird for me to be in touch with her and with her family. I have my own family and I have my own mother-in-law and father-in-law and my beautiful wife.’
His wife is Argentinian model and actress Luisana Lopitato. They married over two ago. ‘When I met her my wife’s English was non-existent. Now her English is flawless. I study Spanish but she tells me I sound like a caveman.
‘We met when I was doing a show in Argentina. At that point I was still hurting with the whole ex thing. I came with my grandfather and my Uncle Butch and we’d gone to get my car after the show and I saw this woman from across the way. I said to my grandfather that’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’
He tells his grandfather everything. His grandfather has been everything to him. When he was a boy he would sing the old standards the old man liked. His grandfather had absolute faith in him. He offered to provide his plumbing services free if a club would give his grandson a chance.
Bublé took those chances and worked relentlessly for years before the first signs of success. His album Call Me Irresponsible and the follow-up Crazy Love were both Number 1 and multi-platinum sellers across the world. Last year he did a sell-out UK arena tour, tickets sold at the rate of 1,500 per minute.
Despite all of this success he felt ‘a complete fraud’. He told me that last time we met. ‘One day I am the king, the next day I’m the pauper.’ Today he puts it a different way. He just didn’t like himself very much, and it took the break-up with Blunt to get him to seek help.
He finds it hard to actually say the word Emily. The relationship was powerful yet perhaps even more powerful in its demise. When I interviewed Blunt earlier this year she pulled a similar contorted face. She is far les open about her emotions but her face at the mention of his name showed its impact on her too had been severe.
Did she end it? ‘It ended through both of us being young and naïve and making silly mistakes. There was not some kind of thing that ended it. It was that it ended. It was about me looking in the mirror and saying ‘Michael, wake up’. I never lived in the moment, not ever. Not in my shows. Not in anything. It was out of insecurity and me worrying what would happen. I thought, you know, you could like yourself more. I hired therapists. I’m not embarrassed to say this. I fucked up.
‘What happened after the ex was probably the most important time of my life. When we were done I was fucked. There was no better word than that. I was devastated. I took time to do therapy. I HAD to.’ His voice resonates with panic as he emphasizes the words ‘had to’.
‘I knew if I didn’t change I would never be happy or content in my own skin with who I was. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the greatest thing that ever happened to me.’
He bought books on how to be happy, his favourite being Eckhart Tolle’s The Power Of Now. He readdressed his eating, which was either no carbs or spaghetti carbonara every day. He started going to the gym and stopped comfort eating so that he feels comfortable in his sharp suits.
‘Nowadays I try to eat healthily and work out every day. I’m kind of addicted. I like doing weights. I was having a hard time and it made me feel better. But speaking of what’s changed, I’m not the same guy. My wife is very conservative, so a lot of things I did I don’t do now. I’m quite disciplined.’
Extremes again, very wild, very disciplined, comfortable being either. ‘When I’m on tour I can’t be smoking, drinking and partying every night. I don’t recuperate like I used to. I’ve got to be an athlete. I can do it every once in a while, have some drinks on the bus. I started smoking an electric cigarette. My wife breaks my balls about the cigarettes. You might as well be smoking a pencil, but it feels like you’ve got something.’
What about the smoking spliff? ‘Gone. She hates it. And it wasn’t bringing value into my life. And now for the most part I like the place I’m in. I don’t need to be in an altered place.
It was around a year after the break-up with Blunt that he first saw Luisana Lopitato after his concert. ‘I was wrapped up in melancholy because as the police escorted us out I thought I would never see her again. Then there was a party at my hotel. I was drinking a lot more at the time because that’s how I was dealing with what I was dealing with and the president of the Argentinian record company said that he would like me to meet Argentina’s most famous actor and actress and in she walked. But the problem was she walked in with this 6’3” Brad Pitt looking dude. I thought this was the worst ever. The girl of my dreams walks in with her boyfriend.
‘She didn’t talk English but he did, so we had a long conversation. I didn’t want to be rude and hit on her. If someone did that to my girlfriend or wife I would not be a happy boy. That would get into a fistfight. It’s a code between boys.
‘I was getting hammered at the time and by the time I had my third double scotch I was slurring my words telling him they made such a good couple. And then he finally said, “We are not a couple”. The girl is texting her mother saying I’ve met Michael Bublé and he is gay… Actually I think I might be a tortillera (means lesbian). I’m a torta (check Spanish) in a male body. So then I started to talk to her and asked if I could spend time with her. She said she had just come out of a relationship and was not ready to get into one. I said, “You’re my wife, you just don’t know it yet. I’m going to come back and marry you”.
‘We emailed each other for months, friendly emails. She was taking lessons in English and I was taking lessons in Spanish. I finally went down there and met her family. I said to her that her family were exactly the same as my family. She just gave me a look. I’m sure every boy in her life has tried to sweet talk her. But it was important for me. We have the same family. Finally when she came to Vancouver she got it. Our sisters can be crazy but there’s lots of love and it’s a very warm and connected family. We are Italian and my wife too is a dual citizen. She is Argentina and Italy and I am Canada and Italy.‘So a year goes by and I’m mad and crazy for her. I asked her father’s permission to marry her at the table and we had a big beautiful Argentinian wedding.’
His wife lives mostly in their house in Argentina for her work. ‘It’s 20 minutes outside Buenos Aires in a gated community. It’s not a secure country and I have bodyguards. It takes 17 hours to get there from Vancouver or LA though. We have a house in LA and we go to nice restaurants. The house in Vancouver where all my family are together. And then we go to Argentina and we have her family over all the time.
Bublé loves to cook for them. We discuss his recipe for risotto with white asparagus and rosemary, and the way he likes to roast his chickens, and how when he first met his in-laws he made them French toast with cinnamon and it’s all they wanted to eat for two days.
He presents a very warm but passionate relationship with his wife. ‘I love going out with my wife and having a couple of glasses of wine. But before when I was going out a lot I never lost control or got to the point where I did something terrible. I just wanted to escape my reality, whereas now I like my reality. It wasn’t meeting my wife that changed this. It was the break-up with the ex. I’d worked on myself and when I met her I felt worthy of love. It’s hard to feel worthy of someone’s love when you are insecure. You think why are they with me?
‘We all sit there with something inside of us thinking you’re going to fail, he or she is going to leave you. What I didn’t know was I had the power not to listen to that. The way to do that for me was to sit here, feel this bed beneath my butt, listen to the air conditioner and look you in the eye and be present with you. I can’t change what I did and I have no control over what is going to happen, only how I handle it, and it’s made me a better husband and a better man with my family.
‘I was always a bit of a spaz, always anxious there was somewhere I had to go. Now I feel I don’t have that. On stage it’s even made me ten times better. I don’t try to be Mr Cool or Mr Suave Guy. Just myself.’
He’s always seemed himself on stage to me. ‘Then I tricked you. I was trying to play the part of someone I thought was cooler. Sometimes I hear shows back and I realise I talk weird. “Hi everybody. It’s nice to see you”,’ he says sounding like an oily smooth 1950s game show host.
‘It’s not that I’m content now. In fact I’m far more scared of failure than I ever was. You’re only as good as your last song. You’ve got to stay hungry.’
How hard is it keeping a relationship going when he’s on the move so much? ‘My wife rarely travels with me. She loves working as much as I do. She’s about to make a couple of movies, and that’s cool for me. iChat really helps. I’ll finish a show, come to my hotel room and I’ll say to her “Do you want to watch a movie?” And we’ll rent a movie together. I’ll get a bowl of popcorn and I’ll sit in bed and we’ll play the movie at exactly the same time. She can see me and I can see her. At the end she might say “OK mi amore, I’m going to sleep” and we keep the iChat going on all night and we sleep together. I know it’s very strange, but it keeps me connected in a very virtual way.’
So they can watch each other sleeping in different parts of the planet? ‘Yeh. And if it disconnects one of us in our sleep will reach over and press the call button so I’ll be passed out and I’ll hear brrring, brrring, and I will push answer. It’s a nice feeling. This happens most nights.
‘Lou and I talk openly that we feel sorry for people who have to see each other every day because it gets tedious. If I’ve been away I miss her like crazy. We take advantage of our time together. We go for walks, see movies, sit with the family, have dinners.
‘Last year for my birthday my wife was working on a movie so I wasn’t expecting to see her. There was a package at my door and it had a tape recorder in it. It said play me and follow the rose petals which were outside my door. She was telling me she missed me and to have a wonderful birthday and I kept walking and I got to this whole breakfast area that was set up with champagne and all the stuff I love and then my wife walked out from behind a bush. She flew 16 hours to be with me for a few hours. Awesome. Now we’ve been married close to three years so she’ll probably just say Happy Birthday. I spoil her. I really love shopping for her. I love buying her new outfits. Or a pair or Manolo Blahniks.
This year he wanted to spend his birthday with his grandfather Mitch. ‘I flew him from Vancouver to have open-heart surgery at Cedars Sinai. It was touch and go for a few weeks. It was scary, but he’s doing amazing.’
He reaches for his phone and shows me a picture of his grandfather who is handsome and looks like a much older twin. ‘He’s my best buddy. Last night for two hours I lay in bed with my grandpa and grandma and my mum and I was taking singing requests. I can never be with them enough. That’s why I’m so looking forward to Christmas. I spend it in the same place every year in Vancouver with my family. We put Ave Maria on the record for grandpa.’
Bublé insists this is not just another Christmas record. ‘It’s the most important record I’ve ever done. Some people are just Christmas people. They thrive in the sentiment. My mother used to play White Christmas from early October through to December 25. I couldn’t get enough of it.’
He bursts into Jingle Bells riding the bed like a sleigh. ‘I’m just really sentimental about Christmas and the way my family was. Every October when I smell the air change I get excited. Most people I know are just kinder to each other.’
He says he will not ask for anything for Christmas ‘except a bunch of cool socks. There’s nothing I need really.’ What is he giving? ‘Everything. For my grandpa, time. We’ll go fishing and watch hockey games. For my wife, I will give her a thousand little things. She’s 24 but like 12. Actually in some ways she’s like 50. More mature than me, but she likes me to go to Mac and I buy her a bunch of make-up and she likes me wrapping it individually.’
What makes him happy? ‘My family and hockey.’ He owns his favourite hockey team, Vancouver Giants. ‘They won the cup a few years ago. I like any sport. I’m like a dog. If you throw a ball I’ll fetch. I love watching hockey. And I used to play it. I’ve always been a really competitive dude. I’d rather lose a game 10-9 than win a game 10-2.’
Has his extreme success surprised him? ‘No. It surprised me that it took this long. I know that sounds terrible but I had such a good time connecting to an audience I was just throwing a party. How could people not want to come?’
I see another part of the caviar/hot dog syndrome. There’s extreme confidence and none at all. A couple of days later we meet again. He wants to talk about who else have been my interviewees. He perks up when we talk about Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson and how their open relationship became messy. ‘I’ve been in some of those relationships, those open ones. I liked them, but guess what, they don’t work. Someone always gets hurt. I got hurt and I’ve done hurting. Open relationships are like communism. In theory a good thing, but when it gets put into place everything falls apart. It’s hard to disconnect yourself like that. And those famous people who think it’s all cool… it’s more cool for one of them than the other.’
Love and its capacity to devastate is not only what he sings about, it’s an unstoppable theme for him. ‘Love has to be unbalanced. It’s the game. The man has to love the woman more so he’s always chasing. My wife is playing it right. I’m like a stupid dog chasing after her car. Roo roo roo roo roo,’ he barks in a kind of half howl.
‘If you really love somebody why would you want them to be with somebody else. For me it would feel weird for me to feel another woman’s lips. I think about it. I see a good looking girl and I think, “ooh look at that girl”. But it would be weird for me to go and do anything about it. It would be strange.
‘My wife is always doing these movies and TV shows where she’s kissing some good looking guy. I ask her what it feels like. She says there’s 50 people watching and there’s nothing romantic. But I don’t know the feeling of kissing without it being romantic. I know my wife. I know her lips. And it would be weird to feel another pair of lips. Totally foreign.’
Did he ever feel that way about other women? ‘No. I didn’t I was a different person. I was insecure. I’m not proud of how I acted. I was reckless with other people’s hearts. I didn’t like myself and I didn’t trust myself. People are stupid. They make the same mistakes. I’ve done that. I kept doing it and then I tried to learn from it.’
What he seems to be saying is that in the past because he was insecure in a relationship he needed the reassurance of other hot women. ‘My wife is hot. She’s a hotty p’totty and I like her. I don’t trust a lot of women, they lie. In high school girls would lie till their last breath and say they never made with Michael Bublé. And now I have friends who will be sitting in a hair salon and this girl who I never met is talking about how much we were doing it.’
It’s as if he’s still perplexed that the Michael Bublé no one wanted to admit they kissed is still the same person and lurks somewhere within. In many ways he’s always had huge self-esteem and almost no self-confidence. You sense sometimes that he can’t believe his luck that he’s married this hot Argentinian actress and they are thinking of starting a family. ‘We’re planning next Christmas. My wife is such a planner.’
With thoughts of birth come thoughts of death. ‘It’s been a tough year for my grandpa. My Uncle Butch, we used to call them the sunshine boys, they came on every tour, and he passed away this year. I took him out of the hospital and hired nurses and had them tape all the hockey games which he would watch in the daytime. I miss my Uncle Butchie. He was a vibrant guy.’ He’s smiling as he regales me with some of Uncle Butchie’s dreadful jokes, but you know he’s thinking of his grandfather who has been the most profound influence on his life. The first time he ever sang was when he heard Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. And that’s why his Christmas album is the most important one he’s ever done. It’s not just Ave Maria that’s for his grandpa, it’s everything.