‘No room in my heart for negativity’
Buble shifts gears after son’s cancer battle
Michael Buble faced his darkest days as a parent when he watched his young son battle cancer, but the singer says living through the experience gave him a renewed perspective on what’s important.
Whether it’s with his family or his music career, the 43-year-old singer appears to have found a higher meaning in all corners of his life.
“Everything I’m doing now is because I get to wake up every morning and just enjoy the moment,” the four-time Grammy winner said in a phone interview.
“It sounds New Agey, but it’s not. It’s how I’ve chosen to attack my life.”
Buble expressed his newfound appreciation many times during a conversation from his Vancouver home.
When he jumped on the phone, his kids could be heard playing in the background, though eventually he ducked into the laundry room for a moment of quiet.
The chart-topping crooner talked about falling into a period of disillusionment with the music industry and his critics, a sentiment that suddenly became meaningless with his son’s diagnosis.
In 2016, he sidelined a publicity tour to focus solely on the boy’s hospital treatment.
It was a painful experience for his family and something that Buble still isn’t ready to discuss in much detail.
When he appeared on a segment of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke this month the singer told the host he’s “not OK” and still finds it “painful to talk about.”
With his family a few rooms away, Buble is focused on staying positive while he reflects on making his new album.
“I’ve got no room in my heart
for any kind of negativity or cynicism,” he said.
“I made a very conscious decision to step away from all those things.”
And Buble has plenty to celebrate in his life anyway.
His son Noah, now five years old, has gone through cancer treatment and is in remission. He’s also recently started attending kindergarten.
In July, Buble and his wife, Luisana Lopilato, welcomed their third child, a baby girl.
All of this good news almost makes Buble’s return to music feel like an afterthought — and in many ways it kind of was. His new album, titled “Love” but spelled with an emoji instead of the word, wasn’t always a guarantee.
Before Noah’s diagnosis, Buble was in the midst of a personal crisis. Some of the excitement he once experienced on stage had faded into routine.
While he remembers once feeling “pure bliss” as he sang to crowds, he said those emotions had often devolved into bouts
of “fear and ego” that came with his rise to stardom.
“What I thought was people’s perception of me might’ve had a negative impact on me. And I probably stopped enjoying this part of my life,” he said.
“It wasn’t as fulfilling.” After Buble put his career on hold for his family, he wasn’t certain when he’d come back to music. But like most artists he found himself jotting down ideas anyway.
When his life started getting back to normal, he invited his band members over for a jam session and a few games of Mario Kart. At first that was all it was supposed to be.
“I hadn’t seen them in a long time,” he said. “We just wanted to get drunk, ya know? Drink beers and play video games.”
Between the rounds Buble started talking about making a concept album which paid tribute to everything he loved about music, lost somewhere along the way, but rediscovered over time.
“I wanted to explain that it was my romance rekindled,” he
said of the idea.
“I wanted there to be a really strong through line.”
“Love” features Buble covering a selection of classic love songs, including “La Vie en Rose” and “My Funny Valentine,” alongside a number of original efforts.