It won't be long until everyone has heard of Michael Bublé. A major new talent who is enjoying a white-hot career as a saloon singer, the 30-year-old Canadian is already well on his way to international stardom; his records are selling as well in Australia and Asia as in North America.
Bublé (pronounced Boo-blay) is an acolyte of Bobby Darin, that sensational showman and musical chameleon of the 1960s who sang in the Sinatra mold, but with a deep feeling for rock. Like Darin, Bublé has the rare ability to swing a ballad up-tempo without sacrificing its poignancy. And, like his charismatic hero, Bublé is able to look, act and sound modern while singing a standard tune written half a century ago.
When he first came on the scene, Bublé got the lounge-singing version of a Bruce Springsteen ballyhoo. The release of his debut album four years ago was accompanied by the kind of promotional push given to very few unknowns. They were even playing him at the Skytrain stations in Bangkok.
After three albums, the reason why has become clear. This is a fresh chapter in a story that began with Bing Crosby and has continued through Sinatra to the present day. Like those others before him, he's carrying on the tradition of the Great American Songbook?but informing it with an experience of R&B, rock and roll and even gangsta rap. Better than most, he succeeds in blurring the edges of the genre.
Bublé's vocal instrument is buttery and confident, and he's rhythmically deft. Some critics have noted a similarity with the masterful Mel Torme. Although not a jazz singer, he swings like mad and some of the arrangements he uses hark back to the brassy barn burners Billy May wrote for Darin and Sinatra. (Thus it's fitting that he records with Reprise, the company Sinatra founded.) Among his influences, Bublé lists Keely Smith, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder, the Mills Brothers and even the long-forgotten Vaughan Monroe. His song list includes romantic chestnuts such as "The Way You Look Tonight" but also comprises his own versions of chart-toppers by the Bee Gees, Lou Rawls and Van Morrison.
Handsome and vulnerable, with a boyish charm that brings out maternal instincts in women, he's rapidly learning how to use his personal attractiveness with flair. No less a critic than Stephen Holden of the New York Times observed that Bublë "drips with a star quality."
We think Bobby Darin would approve.