Michael Bublé (Seven Magazine and others, April 15, 2013)

Michael Bublé is wearing a doll size leather jacket, a teeny red T-shirt and the skinniest dark jeans. I am shocked at how much he’s shrunk and tell him that his ankles are the size of my wrists. He looks pleased.
‘I suppose that I am supposed to be little. I was much much bigger and I really had to eat a lot to get like that. I was chunky. I look back at pictures at me,’ he shakes his head. ‘I remember seeing the cover of Call Me Irresponsible (his 2007 third and pivotal album) and thinking “Ooh, you’re fat”.’ It wasn’t so much that he was fat he was unhappy and eating to block out misery and insecurity.
‘Like everybody, I go up and down. I’ll probably put on ten, take off ten. My wife is really healthy so I’ve got used to eating her healthy food.
‘I used to eat pizzas and burgers and McDonalds. Now I’ll eat a nice piece of fish and vegetables. You just get used to it and you start eating like that all the time. It becomes the new normal.’
Bublé has always been a man of extremes, he ate too much pasta and loved too much and too many women. All that changed when he met his wife, Argentinian model/actress Luisana Lopilato, in 2009. They married 2 years later and are now expecting their first child, a boy, due in July.
When they first met she didn’t speak much English and he no Spanish. It was one of those coup de foudre moments. They met backstage at one of his concerts in Argentina introduced by the president of his Argentinian record company.
At the time he was recovering from his break-up with British actress Emily Blunt. He and Luisana took things slowly and carefully, a first for Bublé.
We are in a homely suit at the Sunset Marquis. It’s a classic rock and roll hotel where televisions have definitely been thrown into the swimming pool and late night tantrums are commonplace. But not with Bublé, not any more.

His latest album, To Be Loved, is seeped with cosy contentment. It’s a happy record. No pain. It’s not been an easy road to get there. He has described his break-up with Blunt as the” worst and the greatest thing” that’s ever happened to him. He bought books on how to be happy. He saw a therapist.

Then he met his future wife but continued with his therapist. ‘I married a girl who doesn’t drink, except once in a while. She goes to the gym every day, eats good. It’s part of her pattern so it becomes part of your pattern. It becomes your lifestyle.’

Does he never have emotional cravings for cheese? He laughs, ‘Let’s be honest, I could live on bread and cheese for every day of my life. If someone told me every day from now on you have to live on bread and cheese I would say “Yesss!”.

The difference is last time we met he gave me his family recipe for spaghetti carbonara – his grandfather is Italian and he has an Italian passport. It had gallons of cream in it.
‘I don’t make it any more. Pasta made me feel yucky, bloated and gassy. Maybe I was allergic to wheat. It’s something I’ve wondered about. I don’t drink any more either. That’s a lot to do with it. You are who you hang out with and my wife doesn’t drink and is very healthy, but four years ago I was tiny, so tiny when I went through the break-up. I was drinking every day, doing nothing, smoking cigarettes and I was really skinny. But I wasn’t healthy skinny I was heart attack skinny. I’m the kind of kind who if I drink I lose my appetite, boom, and if I have a bite to eat I don’t want to drink, I feel full.’

It sounds like he wasn’t eating or drinking for nourishment but to fill a hole of awkwardness, regret and insecurity‘I have never had a drink because I enjoyed the taste. And I don’t do one drink. I’m like Barney from The Simpsons, once it begins it begins.’ The trick is that these days he doesn’t let it begin.

The promotion schedule for this record includes flying from London to Melbourne and back to LA without an overnight stopover in either city. Just enough time to perform a show. He’s always been driven. A huge work ethic handed down from his father Louis, a fisherman, and his grandfather Mitch, a plumber. It must be hard at the top. Surely he’s scared of using his status of being one of the world’s top selling artists? He’s sold over 40 million records and when tickets went on sale for his tour in the UK (he plays six nights at the O2 from June 30) they sold out at the rate of 1,500 per minute. Everyone loves Bublé. He spans generations, both cool and uncool.

‘I’m not thinking like that. I’ve got the baby coming and then I might take some time off or I’ll try acting so I can have my wife and baby with me on set. Right now my priority is all those fans, those people who’ve supported me.’

Bublé doesn’t believe in getting something for nothing, he believes in thanking people wholeheartedly. He believes he has a duty. ‘I used to open for Jay Leno and I used to say “Jay, what is the secret?” and he’d say “Go to their back yards, don’t go to the hubs and expect everyone to come to you. Go to their back yards and when you are in those little c cities that’s how you build relationships, that’s how you build loyalty. And that’s the truth.

‘You can’t put out a record and say Germany, France, Japan, thanks for buying my record. Of course I love you but I’m not going on tour. You’ve got to, you’ve got to go,’ he says with urgency.

I ask him if he finds it hard to say no to things other than too much cheese? ‘Yes, I do.’ Is there part of him that’s now completely reassured with his success or is part of him thinking what if this record doesn’t sell, what if people don’t turn up?

‘Do you know what’s weird, that’s not happening that insecurity. Everything has changed. It’s all changed because of the baby. I’m having a difficult time doing these interviews. I’m proud of the record, it’s a beautiful record, possibly my best record. It’s different and I was brave but being brave stemmed from not caring. That sounds cold but I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

‘When my manager says I wonder if we’re going to sell two million or eight million I’m thinking yeh, either is a great bonus, but let’s hope my wife is healthy and my kid is healthy. I’m 37-years-old and I’m starting to think what’s it all about. It surely isn’t about how many records I can sell or how many stadiums I can fill.

‘This has given me something else, a very different attitude. I’m saying I’m going to do this and if they don’t like it they don’t like it. My perspective has definitely changed. I have no drama to tell you about. I wish I could say these songs came from misery or heartbreak. This was a happy record, truly a joyous occasion.’

It is of course a wonderfully sentimental record. When I heard his version of Young At Heart it made me cry. Bublé has always loved old people. He is extremely close to his grandfather. He still loves to do family sleepovers where they all lie on the couch and sing the old standards together.

‘That song is special to me. I’ve been co-writing with my friend Alan who is a genius, he’s a wonderful arranger, he is my piano player, my musical arranger, my everything. That sounds gay but I would go gay for him. I love you Alan Chang. So he wrote this beautiful arrangement. By the way his girlfriend wouldn’t be happy with me going gay with him.

We were going to go to East West Studios here in LA to put the track down. We had all the musicians, all the strings, everything was ready. We had a bar set up so that when the musicians and I were all done we could all have a drink together so I could thank them. And the night before that day my mother called and said “Mike, your grandpa is not good.” So I just told them all “I’m sorry I can’t be there” and I just left and flew home to Vancouver.

‘They did the recording of the band and a week later I was to sing the vocal. My grandpa pulled through, he was okay. So the next week I sang the vocal and called the producer Bob Rock and said this is just not going to make the record. We are going to have to do something else. He said why and I said it’s emotionless, it’s cold and dead. Everyone was crushed because it was such a beautiful arrangement but I said I’m not feeling it.

‘About a month later I was in the studio and wanted to record a Peggy Lee song called Come Dance With Me. The producer said, “Why don’t we do Young At Heart again while we’re in the studio?” So I thought about my grandpa and I thought about myself. It was the first dance at our wedding. I love the song. And I though okay. And it just goes to show how different it was a few weeks later. I’ve just Skyped grandpa now. I Skype him all the time. I thought about him while I was recording it because I could. Before I was too upset. I smiled through the whole thing. I did it in two takes. It’s not perfect but there’s the emotion in it.

‘It just shows if your head is not in it and your heart is not in it it’s just not there.’

That’s the thing about Bublé, his head and his heart, his whole soul, is always in it. He pours his whole being into those songs so you feel him, you know him. He becomes an emotional touchstone. It’s not about the songs, the voice, it’s about how he puts himself in your heart.
On this album he’s written more of his own songs. Does it worry him that his own songs have to stand up against timeless classics? ‘Yes, sometimes. I just took my favourite songs but for every album you record you could make 50 others. But for this one I was in a good place and I wanted to make it authentic and gentle.
‘The producer Bob Rock agreed that this is a soul record. This is Phil Spector wall of sound. We got as many people in the room as possible, a small room. You hear every note, every background singer and Bob as a producer, he understands everything. His job is to listen to the artist and bring his vision into reality and he does that. I would turn gay for him too. Especially with that long blonde hair of his. I could ride him into the sunset. I would always joke that I was going to tickle him. I love to get tickled. My wife would be sitting with me tickling like this,’ he demonstrates a tickling motion with his slender fingers, ‘and I would go Bob, tickle me. And he would go, fuck off.’
At the mention of his baby he smiles so hard that even his cheekbones, now angular and sharp, seem to round with pride.

‘He’ll be born in Vancouver and raised in Argentina and Vancouver. Mum will only speak Spanish and dad will only speak English. I am a proud Canadian of Italian heritage and he will have all these heritages.’

He wrote the song Close Your Eyes with the wonderful Canadian singer songwriter Jann Arden, and he wrote it about his wife. ‘Jann is the funniest woman I’ve ever met and I love writing songs with her. This song happened one day, I sat at the piano. I can never write sober, but I started to think about my wife and how much she means to me and how much she helps carry me, you know. How she shares the load with me. I started to think about all women and how strong they are and how important they are in the life of a man and this song is about how we depend on them. It wasn’t just that I was missing her it’s that I get sentimental and I was just thinking; you’re always the one that pulls us through. And people call women the weaker sex. How foolish is that This is what this person is to me. All of these things that are strength and support.
‘I notice the stability my wife has given me in simple ways. In other relationships I would think let’s go on vacation and the girl would say, “Let’s go to Hawaii”, and I would say who do we call, what couple do we get to go with us? It’s like I always needed someone else there. With my wife it’s just we’re good together.
‘I had my father and my mum come to LA this weekend. We had a few drinks and I was sitting talking to them and I said, “39 years. How do you make it work?” My dad said, “I love your mum. But more importantly I like her too.” And that’s really something.
‘Lu is my best friend. Honestly, easily, she is. And I didn’t realise that if you are with somebody in a romantic capacity that they would become your family. I’ve always separated family. I thought romance and friendship was linked but different.’
Do you think perhaps the nature of romance is that you were idealising someone that was unreachable in the past. ‘Yes, and I think it was more obsession than love and I’ve lived that a million times.’
Do you feel that when those past relationships became more familiar and more friendly you lost interest in them romantically? ‘Yes, exactly.’ Do you think that some of the past relationships, although you loved them, you didn’t actually like them? ‘Yes, absolutely.
‘I went to dinner last night and I was alone. It was couples, couples, couples. All I could think of was I wish she was here because I would be funnier, more talkative and more interesting, although the truth is they’d probably like her more than me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone out to dinner and people said, “Mike, we love you, but we really love her”. And I love that, it’s wonderful for me.’
There is no doubt that what drove Bublé in the past was a need to be loved, and now that he feels that he is loved the dynamic of everything he does is different. I got the impression that he would never want to displease his record company even though he is their biggest selling artist.
He wrote a song with Tom Jackson called I Got It Easy. He tells me the story to illustrate the profound change that has gone on within. ‘We were on my tour bus having a party, my wife and everybody. Like I said, I don’t drink so much any more, but we were having a cocktail and we just came up with this song. It coincides with things I think are happening all over the world – economic crisis, disasters, shootings. There’s all of this darkness. But for the rest of us if you can afford to download a track from a CD then you’ve got it easy.

‘They told me that people wouldn’t like I’ve Got It Easy. The record company didn’t like it. They said it’s dark and you don’t sound like you. It’s not a hit song, it’s not going to get on the radio. But part of the new bravery I feel is I said, Maybe it’s not a radio song. For me it’s a thoughtful, personal, important song. I said to my manager, I want to grow. And he said, you write hit songs, why do you have to grow? He called the record company and said, whatever we have to pay for the mechanicals on the final song, we want it. I told the record company if it doesn’t get on the radio you deal with it. It’s a polarising song. My mum hates it, my sisters love it.’

Did he call the album To Be Loved because that’s how he feels now? ‘I wish I’d come up with the title. ‘My manager Bruce Allen came up with the title. We call him The Colonel, like Elvis’s Colonel. He’s managed me since I was 25 and Bryan Adams since he was 17. And Jann Arden and Bob Rock as well. He got emotional to see his record family together. He said, “I’ve got my family here. The kids are all together and making this beautiful thing. I’m getting sentimental. Isn’t it wonderful to be loved.”

Does he feel loved? ‘Yes, I’m very content, although I miss my wife. I don’t like that I’m missing the pregnancy part. She is in Argentina making a movie and doing a shoot for the lingerie company she is the face of. She tells me, “Mi amore, I have a big tummy.”
He shows me a picture on his phone of his pregnant wife. She is blonde with a goofy smile and pregnant belly. ‘Look at how happy she is to show me this. I think she’s sticking it out. She’s definitely a rambunctious girl.’ She also has giant breasts. ‘She does! Always! Giant!’ he says with a giant smile.

‘That’s the question most people ask. Are they real? They are real of course. They are bigguns though…… Everything makes me happy: my family, listening to music, dancing, life, hockey. Hockey is my number one passion. It would overpower music. Playing it, watching it, eating it, drinking it, I just love it.’

He tells me he could chat all day. He’s never been a nervous interviewee. He’s always liked to share and to make the interviewer laugh. You wonder how long he can make life on the roadwork now that he has the option of stability and fatherhood. He says he’s serious about acting.
‘I have anxiety sometimes when I think about new things I want to try. My first choice would be a drama, a serious drama. I wouldn’t want to do a musical or comedy. But I’ve made a record and it’s coming out in 42 countries.’
While his wife comes out to a show here and there he’s not fond of other people’s women on the road. He doesn’t for instance like women crew or musicians.
‘I say, “There’s no relationships on the road” and they say to me, “Of course we’re not going to have relationships. We are professionals and we have a boyfriend at home.” The next think you know they’re bonking the sound guy. And then the sound guy is fighting over another girl and it becomes a drama. It’s an incestuous life. Let’s make it easy. Every time I’ve had female crew we’ve had serious break-ups and yellings. Obviously I love women. It’s not about not loving women. It’s about I don’t want to be surrounded by drama.’

There was a time not so long ago when he courted drama, he danced to it like a moth to the flame. ‘You know what else I don’t like? I don’t like shimmery saxophones.’ What do you mean? He does his impersonation of a shimmery saxophone. ‘They creep me out. They remind me of The Muppets in a bad way. I don’t like it when I’m on the road and the brass section starts improvising. It’s like when someone takes a poop on a piece of paper and goes this is abstract art.

He and his wife have recently started a charity called lendafreehand.com to help dogs about to be euthanised because their owners can no longer afford to feed them. Bublé has always felt the underdog. ‘I am the underdog. I’ve sold a bunch of records. I’ve never been asked to be on the Grammys or any of that stuff. I do big business. I sell more records at any point than, well, I am in the top five touring acts in the world. But I don’t show up at the parties. I don’t have a reality TV show. I’m not seen shopping in Beverly Hills. There’s a difference between being famous and being a celebrity. Maybe I’m just too normal for everything like that. But my manager always says, “Hey kid, keep being the underdog. You’re doing the right thing.”

Michael Buble – April 15, 2013 (Hello Magazine)

I walk in to the giant hotel suite where I am to meet Michael Bublé. Giant bed, giant overstuffed couch, giant TV, but no Bublé. He’s hiding behind the door and jumps out to surprise me. He is giggling and excited, his arms and legs looking skinny and agile.

He is happy about his new record To Be Loved. But that’s not what’s making his heart dance. He has just found out that he’s having a baby with his Argentinian wife Luisana Lopilato who he married in March 2011.

His nut-brown eyes sparkle. ‘The baby changes everything. It comes first. This is truly a joyous occasion.’

I’ve seen Bublé ecstatic before, but this is different. This is not a high that’s been preceded by a low. This is grown-up contentment. He’s 38 and is ‘ready and excited for fatherhood.’

Last time we met over a year ago he said, ‘We are planning a baby for next Christmas. My wife’s a big planner.’

In fact it was Christmas when she discovered they were pregnant. ‘I was genuinely shocked about the baby. We’d been planning…..but hey, good luck planning, that kind of thing. And also my wife lied to me. Well, she didn’t exactly lie, but she knew she was pregnant but she didn’t tell me but she wanted to come to Vancouver and tell me in person to surprise me.

‘I thought, okay, she’s got her period the chance for this month is over because I’d asked her, anything happening? “No, honey. It’s not this time,” she said. He mimics her Argentinian accent. ‘So I was in shock completely.’
The first person he told was Reece Whitherspnoon.
One of the songs on the album is the classic Something Stupid, which has always been one of his favourite songs. ‘I had it in my head I was going to do a duet and I was thinking let’s get someone in the music industry who isn’t who you would think it would be. Let’s get Rihanna or Katy Perry. My manager said what about Reece Witherspoon. I am infatuated with Walk The Line. I loved her in that movie and I loved her voice, a little Peggy Lee-ish. Anyway, she was interested but she was nervous because it’s not her world.

‘I called her up the day I found out I was having a baby. No one else in the world knew but I told her first. That’s weird, isn’t it ? it was an incredible day and I just found and I was so overwhelmed. And I knew she’d just had her baby. I said, Reece, I’ve got to tell you this before we even get into a conversation. I’m having a baby. She was excited for me.

‘We talked and talked about baby stuff and then I just said, listen hon’, I’d like to have you on this record. I said, look honey, this is huge. This is the greatest day of my life and if you would do this it would awesome, it would be the icing on the cake. If you’re not comfortable with it I still love you. I get that you are nervous and it’s not in your comfort zone, but if you could just come in, if we don’t like it we won’t use it. She came in and she was perfect the first take.

‘ The second she opened her mouth I was so chuffed. It really was the icing on the cake. She’d obviously done a lot of work and prepared really well. It was the very last song we recorded on the record.’

He talks very fast and excitedly about the baby. He takes out his phone and shows me a picture of his wife wearing a brightly coloured bikini top and a slightly pregnant belly. At the time he didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl and we have since learned it is a boy.

‘I didn’t want to find out but my wife does. She’s the boss. She’s carrying the baby so she gets her say.’

I had read that if it was a girl it was going to be called Bella Bublé but I’ve since found out that’s the name of his publicist Susan Leon’s dog. Her old dog had just died and she was devastated ‘So I got this little puppy. We were working late and Susan was about to go but I told her oh just wait a minute, I’ve got somebody bringing something. The door knocked and there was this little puppy and I said “I love you Susan”. So the name Bella was already taken.

‘My wife loves the Twilight Saga so I was worried she wanted to call the baby Bella or Edward. My wife knew she was carrying a boy. “It’s a boy”.

He mocks her accent again. She kept saying before she knew officially ‘I’ll take either, I’ll take a healthy hermaphrodite.
‘He’ll be born in Vancouver and raised in Argentina and Vancouver. Mum will only speak Spanish and dad will only speak English. I am a proud Canadian of Italian heritage and he will have all these heritages.’

The last time Bublé and I met he ordered caviar and a hot dog from the room service menu, a kind of metaphor that he is an extreme character. Today it’s a simple coffee with a little cream. He has worked hard on himself with a therapist to moderate his extremes but the love of Luisana has helped more than any therapy ever could.

I remember when he was crazy in love, hence the album title Crazy Love, with the British actress Emily Blunt. He wrote the song Everything for her which went on to be a worldwide smash, but his heart smashed too when the relationship fell apart.

‘It would be weird for me to be in touch with her and her family as I have my own family now. He refers to his siblings-in-law as cunadas. He certainly speaks a lot more Spanish than he used to. He’s been taking lessons. ‘My wife tells me I still sound like a cave man.’

They met at an after show of a concert of his in Argentina. ‘There was a party at my hotel. I was drinking a lot more at the time because I was dealing with what I was dealing with and the president of the Argentinian record company said he would like me to meet Argentina’s most famous actor and actress. She walked in with a Brad Pitt looking dude and I thought this is the worst ever, the girl of my dreams walks in with her boyfriend.

‘She didn’t speak 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. It’s code between boys. I was getting hammered and slurring my words and finally he said, “We are not a couple.”

‘Meanwhile Lu is texting her mother saying “I have met Michael Bublé and he is gay.” Then we started talking. She had just come out of a relationship and was not ready to get into one. I said to her, “You’re my wife. You just don’t know it yet. I’m coming back to marry you.” And that’s exactly what he did although she looked at him a little incredulous at the time.

He wrote the song Haven’t Met You Yet for her. People would joke to him in the street “Have you met her yet then?”. He knew in his heart he absolutely had.

‘I asked her father’s permission to marry her and we had a big beautiful Argentinian wedding. She lives mostly in their gated house in Argentina, just outside Buenos Aires. He has a house in Vancouver close to his beloved parents and grandparents and a house in LA. He says they are with each other whenever they can be. Sometimes if they have to be apart they watch a movie together in their separate beds in separate parts of the world.

‘I’ll get a bowl of popcorn and 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’ll say “Mi amore, I am going to sleep” but we keep the iChat going on all night as we sleep. I know it sounds very strange but it keeps me connected in a virtual way. And if it disconnects one of us in our sleep we’ll reach over and press the call button. I might be passed out but I’ll hear brrrng brrrng and I will press answer. It’s a nice feeling.
‘My wife is very conservative so lots of things I used to do I don’t do. I don’t drink very often and I eat very healthily. For the most part I like the place I’m in. I don’t need to be in an altered place. What happened to me after the ex was probably the most important time of my life. When we were done I was devastated. I had to do therapy, I had to. I knew if I didn’t change I’d never be happy or content in my own skin. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the greatest thing. It ended through both of us being young and naïve and making silly mistakes. I looked in the mirror and said wake up. I did so many things out of insecurity…’

Clearly he may still have anxious moments but that obsession for filling a deep dark space with spaghetti and cocktails has long gone. He doesn’t stop being grateful. He doesn’t stop working hard, but perhaps not just as obsessively.
He had his mother and father with him in LA last week but they don’t like to stay too long because carers for his grandparents. Does your wife come with you to LA? ’Yes, she comes everywhere with me whenever she can.’ She does not however come on tour with him very often. ‘I don’t like to travel with women. I don’t like to have women in the band. We are a family and we have this perfect dynamic and I don’t want to add something in. every time I have women on the road it ends up in tears.’

I imagine he likes to keep his work life a little separate from his domestic life. ‘But if I’m away I miss her like crazy. If you really love somebody why would you want to be with somebody else? These days if I see a good looking girl I think oh look at that girl, but I would never do anything about it. I was a different person before. I was insecure. I’m not proud of how I acted. I was reckless with people’s hearts, but I have learnt from it.

‘Am I happy now? Yes. And I’m happy making her happy. ‘You know my wife is a big advocate for animals. She’s rescued thousands of dogs in Argentina, so for Christmas we bought part of a company called Freehand. In the US they euthanize three million dogs every year because people can’t afford to feed them. For every bag of dog food you buy in the store we donate a bag to the pound. It’s like a pound for pound. We don’t pay for advertising. Celebrities help us by getting the word out. We have a website called lendafreehand.com. My wife has eight dogs and six cats. I’ll come home and there’ll be the scariest one-eyed dog looking at me and she’d be “Isn’t he so cute?” and I’ll be “ it’s the hound from hell.”

‘There are so many charities and worthwhile causes that the only thing people have to do here is buy their dog some dog food.’

He asks me please can I mention the dogs. He says he’d rather I mentioned the dogs than his latest album because it would make his wife happy. His wife and mini Bublé have changed his perspective and made him feel loved.
*To To Be Loved is out on April 15.