‘NO ROOM FOR NEGATIVITY’
Canadian crooner Bublé shifts gears after son’s cancer battle
Michael Bublé faced his TORONTO 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 aspects 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 recent interview. “It sounds New Agey, but it’s not. It’s how I’ve chosen to attack my life.”
Bublé expressed his new-found 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 Bublé still isn’t ready to discuss in much detail.
When he appeared in a Carpool Karaoke segment recently on The Late Late Show with James Corden, the singer told the host he’s “not OK” and still finds it “painful to talk about.”
With his family a few rooms away, Bublé 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 Bublé 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, Bublé and his wife, Luisana Lopilato, welcomed their third child, a baby girl.
All of this good news almost makes Bublé’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, Bublé 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 have had a negative impact on me. And I probably stopped enjoying this part of my life,” he said. “It wasn’t as fulfilling.”
After Bublé 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 Bublé started talking about making a concept album that 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 Bublé covering a selection of classic love songs, including La Vie en Rose and My Funny Valentine, alongside a number of original efforts.
Pop singer Charlie Puth, who’s earning acclaim for his own contemporary take on a crooner, is credited as one of the writers on the lead single Love You Anymore.
And Bublé’s personal touch is all over Forever Now, a poignant and tender ballad that’s a slightly veiled tribute to Noah. It’s the closest Bublé has come to bearing his soul through his lyrics, and he’s said he doesn’t intend to perform the song live.
Even Bublé’s mentor David Foster temporarily stepped out of his retirement from studio projects to lend a hand. It took the singer prodding him a bit before Foster agreed to make the exception.
“I don’t know that he would’ve come out of retirement for anyone else,” Bublé suggested. “We both kept saying, ‘I’m so rusty, I haven’t been in here for a long time.’ It was really fun to get the rust off and start moving.”
As he forges the next stage of his career, Bublé said he’s thinking more about what he chooses to “put out into the universe.” He wants whatever he does next to come across as “genuine” and “pure.”
“What I’ve been through and the perspective I have, I think it’s been invigorating in a way,” he said. “I found that joy again.”