Entertainment
King of Croon
By Chris Cannon published Mar 1, 2008
Thirty years after Bill Murray officially kitsched hotel-lobby entertainment on Saturday Night Live as Nick the Lounge Singer, crooning is cool again. Many of the old-timers (say, Tom Jones) have become parodies of themselves, but hometown hero Michael Bublé (a Burnaby boy) is reinventing lounge as a contemporary genre. At his January show at GM Place, he opens with Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man,” and a rink full of fans—mostly giggly girls seated in pairs, aged roughly eight to 80—gasps in delight.
Marilyn Woo, a 42-year-old accountant, eagerly thumbs a snapshot she took of him when he played The Vicki Gabereau Show in 2003. She writes a mash note on the back, hoping to give it to him after tonight’s concert. She has only missed one local performance and can rattle off the venues he’s played as if they’re an old family recipe: the Commodore, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Deer Lake Park. “He’s genuine,” she says. “He’s clever and likes to have fun and doesn’t hide it. He’s a normal guy.” Well, I suppose—if normal is Sinatra from the waist up, Elvis from the waist down, and Jerry Lewis all over.
Record companies are wrestling with epidemic illegal downloading; major labels are passing up Barenaked Ladies; Radiohead and Prince are experimenting with giving their music away. But Bublé’s CDs are flying off the shelves the old-fashioned way: thanks to media saturation and endless touring. A typical Bruce Allen artist (Bublé’s Vancouver-based manager also launched BTO and Bryan Adams to stardom), Bublé pushes product by catching toeholds in every market he can, touring 25 countries in the past year alone. The formula has paid off: his first two studio albums, Michael Bublé and It’s Time, have sold more than 10 million units worldwide, and Call Me Irresponsible, his latest, is approaching the five million mark its first year out.
The merchandise islands in the GM Place lobby serve him up like controlled-portion cheesecake: T-shirts, hoodies, key chains, coffee mugs, magnets, posters, greeting cards, ring tones (just text BUBLE to 99499!). The tour program lists dates and the dozen-plus band members, but it’s clearly meant for pin-up value, mostly given over to glossy shots featuring the many sides of Michael Bublé. (Forget bedroom eyes, the man wears an entire motel on his face.)
