By Francois Marchand
There is the swagger and style Bublé co-opted as much from the Rat Pack as he did from ol’ Bing, and then there’s the love for the Christmas season, which Crosby made into one of his most famous features thanks to “White Christmas,” one of the most famous songs of all time.
And much like Crosby, Bublé certainly knows how to flex his comedic muscle, and there’s a silly charm in the way he deadpans, “I f—ing hate Christmas” between two takes during the taping of his latest Christmas TV special, Michael Bublé: Home For The Holidays.
It’s early October in Vancouver and Bublé is on his fourth attempt at trying to nail the opening sequence to the TV show that will air Monday night across North America on Citytv and NBC, one that sees him “run all the way home” to celebrate the festive season.
In the sequence, Bublé waltzes into a darkened production studio his team rented in the basement of the CBC building on Hamilton Street in Vancouver, where family, friends and fans greet him to thunderous applause, fake snow falling from the ceiling, Christmas trees aglow, his 30-plus-piece band cueing the horns and strings for Bublé to sing “Let It Snow.”
Except that there are a few technical issues: The fake snow is problematic for the string players (it clogs up the F-holes in the delicate and expensive instruments), which forces a few extra breaks where half of Bublé’s band has to walk out of the studio while the snow is cleared away, and there are a couple of miscues involving the cameras and lights.
Nothing out of the ordinary for a high-priced studio audience TV taping.
So when Bublé looks at his crowd, sighs and mouths, “I f—ing hate Christmas,” he does so with a sneaky, Grinch-like grin. In fact, the 37-year-old has been keeping the mostly middle-aged crowd in good spirits throughout the multiple takes with a few salty, self-deprecating jokes.
Despite the early hiccups, the taping goes smoothly. Less than 90 minutes later, Bublé has wrapped his monologues and sung two other songs: “Darlene Love’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” featuring a few Vancouver backup singers including Tonye Aganaba and The Sojourners’ Khari McLelland, and timeless classic “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” He has also delivered his season’s greetings with the help of his entire family (minus Argentine wife Luisana Lopilato, who is shooting a movie in Italy), the Bublé bunch waving to the cameras as the crowd claps and the credits are set to roll.
At one point during the recording of the one-hour special, Bublé quips that he could never do what his Jewish friends do and have “eight days of Christmas.”
It’s a bit of a ridiculous statement, because Bublé has been doing the Christmas thing for well over a year.
“I’ll get on a plane in July and put my headphones on and listen to Bing Crosby,” Bublé says, sitting in his dressing room after the taping has been completed. “I love it, man. It’s not just about Christmas, they’re masterfully written songs and truly some of the most wonderful melodies ever written. People still love them and it’s not because they’re sentimental. They’re solid songs.”
So when the Burnaby-bred crooner released his Bob Rock-produced Christmas album in October 2011, the results were miraculous.
The record would become one of the hottest discs of 2011, selling over seven million copies worldwide (the second biggest selling album of the year behind Adele’s 21) and winning the Juno for Album of the Year, much to the chagrin of some music critics.
His first Christmas television special, which featured guests Justin Bieber, Oscar the Grouch and comedian/actor Ed Helms, was also a hit last year.
This time around Bublé has enlisted Rod Stewart (with whom Bublé sings “Winter Wonderland” on Christmas album Merry Christmas, Baby), Grammy-nominated pop star Carly Rae Jepsen, country sensation Blake Shelton (who also has a Christmas album on which Bublé appears) and fuzzy red critter Elmo for his show.
The biggest surprise this year is admittedly the special collaboration between Bublé and the late Crosby thanks to the magic of special effects, the two dueting on “White Christmas.”
Bublé recently released the “duet” as a single and reissued his Christmas album with the added track. Not so surprisingly, the album quickly re-entered the Top 10 on the Canadian charts.
“I think the Bing thing is going to shock people — it’s a blast,” Bublé says of the collaboration. “I don’t want to set myself up for failure, but so many of these Christmas specials are put together as an afterthought, as a cash cow. For me, I was impacted heavily by Christmas music. Every kid is different, you know? The reason I got into standards was this Bing Crosby record.
“It started to make me realize everyone, as a celebrity or a star, has their moment where they make a dent in pop culture, where they leave a legacy. Mostly it’s done through debauchery — getting caught doing drugs or bonking a hooker on a sex tape — so if the way it happens for me is by having a Christmas special every year, like some of my favourite people did, then I just want it to be great.”
Bublé was heavily involved in the writing of the special, which he says he modelled after Saturday Night Live. Producer Lorne Michaels was also part of the early stages of development last year, but had to pull out due to commitments with SNL.
“Christmas specials are notoriously corny, and I don’t mind that part of it,” he adds. “But the truth is I set out to make fun of myself — it’s a very Canadian thing — and I want people to be able to say that was the best Christmas special they’ve seen in a long time. It was the same when I made the record.”
Bublé’s Christmas album winning top honours at the Juno Awards earlier this year caused more than a few waves.
Critics were quick to attack, arguing a holiday record should not have been considered for the Album of the Year category.
Bublé does not disagree, though he also sees why his album fully deserved the title.
“I was on the phone with my auntie and I said, ‘Uh-oh, I won. They’re gonna kill me.’ Because I feel the same way: The album of the year probably shouldn’t be a Christmas album. But the truth is that if everyone put out a Christmas album and sold seven and half million copies, we would have a problem. But it doesn’t happen. It’s once in a blue moon. I just happened to sell a lot of copies and that’s the criteria for the award: It’s the best-selling record in the record business.”
In spite of the critics, Bublé’s Christmas album venture has paid off in the form of a sold-out 10-concert run at London’s O2 Arena starting on June 30 next year, and in the form of a new (non-Christmas) album produced by Bob Rock featuring some of Paul McCartney’s touring musicians and members of soul/R&B band The Dap-Kings. The album will be released in the spring.
As busy as he may be, there is no way Bublé would ever consider not coming home to Vancouver for Christmas.
Bublé hates Christmas? Not a chance.
“I never skip,” he says. “Never could, never would. And the whole family from Argentina comes too, so it’s like a big international Christmas. It’s a huge Christmas party — 60, 70 people. We have a room for music where everybody just sings along, we have a room with games for the kids. My brother-in-law is a DJ from Mexico and he plays all these reggaeton things, so my wife loves it.”
Michael Bublé: Home For The Holidays (Dec. 10, NBC, Citytv 10 p.m. ET/PT; NBC 9 p.m. MT; Citytv 8 p.m. MT)
