‘I OWE THIS RECORD TO MY FANS’
The singer talks about his son’s cancer battle – and says he won’t quit showbiz
It changed their lives forever. On October 31, 2016, Michael Buble and wife Luisana Lopilato’s older son Noah was diagnosed with liver cancer.
“It was the worst possible thing you could hear as a parent, maybe as a human being,” says Michael, 43, who put his entire life on hold for the next seven months to support his family and care for his now five-year-old son.
“I think that life changes for all of us when we face the mortality of someone who you love so much.”
Today Noah’s cancer is in remission and the entire Buble family – which includes younger son Elias, two, and daughter Vida, three months – are counting their blessings and not taking one minute for granted.
“Every day should just be joy,” explains Michael.
And contrary to rumours the Canadian crooner is walking away from showbiz, he’s in fact gearing up for the release of his new album, Love, next month. Here, he gets candid about his work, his family and finding happiness after the darkest days of his life. You’ve been through so much. How are you doing? Good, better every day. Just trying to live the new normal, whatever that is. Your new album is titled Love. What’s the meaning behind it? This album represents the snapshot of my life, and where I’ve been, and who I am. It’s a group of short stories that are my theory of love and the complicated, varied, layered emotion. Love isn’t romantic always – it carries many connotations. Would you say this is your most personal album yet? Well, after what I’ve gone through – yes. I don’t think I knew how else to do it. I took all of my fear, gratitude and pain, and I just wrote and arranged it... I understand the emotion involved – and I don’t know if I was able to do that before. It seems you look at your career in a different light now. Yeah, I didn’t want people to know, but [before Noah’s diagnosis], I lost my love of all of it. I was having zero fun. My decisions were based on fear – the fear of losing it, the fear it was going to all go away. I cared about what people thought and what they were saying. If I hadn’t gotten [Noah’s] diagnosis, I don’t think it would have ended well. I think I was headed for a great downfall. You were having a career crisis when you got the worst news of your life? Yeah. As I was having this crisis the diagnosis came, and all of a sudden I was sitting in another dimension. This film that I had over me just popped and [I got] this clarity. I was like, “What are you worried about, a***hole?
‘Out of something so hard, something so beautiful’
What the internet said? Or how many tickets or if the song is No.2 or No.4 on the chart?” Sitting on my own in a hospital, I was embarrassed. In that moment, I said, “I’ll never go on social media again. I will never look at a critic, I will never read my name.” [And] from that day, I never read my name in print. I never will.
How did you and your family get through this?
You [the people]. The love we got from the people all over the world. The way we were treated by the media gave us faith in humanity. My wife and I, there were days we just knew they were praying for us. Part of my reason for having this record was that I wanted to be able to say thank you in a small way. You and Luisana recently welcomed your third child, daughter Vida... She’s beautiful. My wife is so happy. She’s in love. It’s really nice and really beautiful. Her name [which means “life” in Spanish] obviously was purposeful because we felt like it was kind of a miracle for us. Out of something so hard, something so beautiful.
Do you feel this brought you closer together?
Closer, yes. But I think you find out who people are when sh*t hits the fan — and you find out a lot about yourself. I fell very deeply in love with my wife as a human being and as a mother. I’m very lucky – I married a great woman.