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Buble braves new waves
Michael Buble continues his fight against crooner typecasting on new album
BERNARD PERUSSE
The Gazette
Thursday, April 19, 2007
CREDIT: CHRIS PIZZELLO, REUTERS FILE PHOTO
Michael Buble said he was shocked by the flap caused when he originally vowed not to attend the Grammys. Above, he is shown at the Grammys pre-show.
When you've sold 10 million CDs worldwide, you're not - by definition - covering the more wacko musical experiments of Captain Beefheart. But within the huge parameters of Michael Buble's mega-stardom, there's a tiny room usually reserved for the singer by some of his fans, foes - and even friends. Just look for a sign on the door that reads "swingin' crooner."
Buble, it seems, is ready to find another pad. And he figures his new disc, Call Me Irresponsible, might just contain the key to digs with more breathing space.
The platinum-selling popster made his name belting out martini-friendly standards like Come Fly With Me and I've Got You Under My Skin. And, sure, there are some of those on his latest, including the title track. But when Home, an unashamedly catchy pop song co-written by Buble, went to No. 1 two years ago, he saw some light at the end of the typecasting tunnel.
While he managed to throw songs by the likes of the Beatles and Marvin Gaye onto his first two discs, Buble said he has always run into resistance about expanding too much.
In a recent telephone interview with The Gazette, the singer tackled his quiet battle against pigeonholing with typical candour and animation, livening many answers with his trademark punctuation word, "man."
"I was born in '75 - not '25 or '35," Buble said. "Pop music has naturally influenced me. One of the big fights that my manager and I have had is, 'Stop putting me on the jazz shelf.' Put me on the pop shelf. I sing rock and pop and R&B and great bossa novas and boleros."
To that end, Call Me Irresponsible contains more of the modest mold-breakers than his previous albums, including two new Buble co-writes: Lost, penned with Jann Arden, and the album's first single, Everything. Both are adult-contemporary pop all the way.
Lost, Buble said, is about the breakup of his relationship with long-time girlfriend Debbie Timuss. "I loved the girl. And I'll always love the girl," he said. "We just happened not to be right together, and we moved on. It was devastating. I mean, this was my best friend, you know?" Arden, he said, helped him get out of a lyric-writing mindset that was "too subjective and too emotional."
Buble is now dating actress Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada), whose affection for Billy Paul's 1972 hit Me and Mrs. Jones encouraged Buble's producer David Foster to become insistent on the singer covering it.
Buble fired up the iPod to hear the original. "I thought it was so cheesy and I just looked at Emily and I went, 'I can't believe you did this to me.' " Eventually, he said, he fell in love with the track. "It's really kind of sexy and hip - and I liked, maybe, a little bit of the cheese in it, you know what I mean?" he said, laughing.
The song appears on the new disc, along with covers of Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight, recast as a moody bossa nova,
and Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man.
That's no misprint.
"I've always loved Leonard Cohen," Buble said. "What a great way to be able to take this slow-burning, sexy, dark song into my world."
Buble said he was so excited with the recording that he phoned its author, whom he portrayed as friendly and congratulatory.
"I said to him, 'I'm afraid to do (I'm Your Man) live,' " Buble said. "He said, 'Well, why are you afraid?' " And here, Buble leaves a conspiratorial pause. If he were standing here, he'd do the fake look-both-ways-and-lean-in-for-a-whisper bit. "And I said, 'Well, Leonard, you wrote such a sexy song, I'm afraid the men are going to throw their underpants at me!' " Buble deadpanned, before laughing heartily.
Yet he was deferent enough to let Cohen get the real punchline: "And Leonard said to me, very drily," - and here, Buble slipped into an imitation of Cohen's low, gravelly voice - " 'I don't think it'll be a problem.' "
One genuine problem for Buble, however, was his widely reported refusal to attend the Grammys in February because his category, best traditional pop vocal album, would not be part of the televised broadcast. "They might as well have already scratched Tony Bennett's name into the damn thing," he added, two weeks before the ceremonies. He subsequently changed his decision.
Buble said he was shocked by the controversy, but did a full-on mea culpa. "I think this music is the greatest gift America has given to the arts," he said, referring to the standards catalogue. "And to see it (absent) at the Grammys was something I just didn't understand. But boy, oh, boy, could I have picked a much classier way to get that across."
The experience also taught him that journalists are not his friends, he said. "The thing about Tony Bennett, they could have (added), 'He said, laughing,' " he argued. "I'm just not that guy. I don't want to be controversial. I want to make music. My job is to make music."
Michael Buble's Call Me Irresponsible is scheduled to be in stores May 1.
Q&A: To read the full transcript of The Gazette's interview with Michael Buble, go to Editor's Picks on our website.
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