absolute brighton

“Working on a fishing boat for six years
with my dad every summer gave me the
greatest lessons I’ve learned in my life”
keep going. When I started out, I learned organically to be aware of the
moment or hide from the fact that some people in the room didn’t care.
I used self-depreciating humour and sang often; three shows a night for all
I was worth. Nearly always by the time the night was over, I had’em! By
the time I got to play for people who actually paid to see me, it was easy.
It felt as though one day someone had disconnected the parachute and I
felt like I could fly.”
That’s right, overnight success… not!
For 11 years, Michael bounced around the entertainment business singing
around Canada, and sometimes acting. Though starting to make a name
for himself performing at Vancouver’s famed Babalúu Club, he was close
to calling it quits: “I just felt it was going nowhere.”
Then appeared lady luck at a wedding...
Michael’s biggest break appeared back in 2000, when the daughter of the
then Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, was getting married and a
mutual acquaintance asked him to perform at the event. The ‘blade’ sang
‘Mack the Knife.’ Fortunately, one of the guests was the Prime Minister’s
good friend, award-winning record producer David Foster, who’d helped
fashion hits for Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and
a Grammy-load of others. As they say, the rest is hysteria! (Besides,
Mulroney reportedly put Foster in a headlock until he agreed to sign
Michael Bublé).
Six years on, and three albums later, he has managed to sell out arenas
all over the world culminating in a headline gig captured in documentary
detail on the hit DVDs ‘Michael Bublé Meets Madison Square Garden’,
and his previous ‘Caught In the Act’. Icing on the career success also
came as his haunting ‘Home’ turned into a number one hit not only for
him but became a number one country hit for Blake Shelton. Meanwhile,
another of his hits, ‘Everything’ has travelled in full circle from his being
discovered at a wedding, to becoming one of the most popular first
dance tunes in the bridal pantheon.
For all of his diversity of musical styles, his love is still the ocean, where
Michael gamely fishes. Storms and waves and nets and mermaids, and
sometimes man overboard; he has sung about it all because he’s oared
the craft of love gone right… and wrong. “I hope people have heard the
difference on my ‘Crazy Love’ album,” says Michael. “Maybe they won’t
know why, but it is distinct from everything else they are hearing on the
radio; like the difference between a nice picture of flowers and then real
flowers with all the colour and perfumes. People have an inborn sense of
what is authentic.”
ABSOLUTE INTERVIEW
ABSOLUTE 25