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The Music of Michael Buble

Thirty tracks from a Canadian singer who revived a format the industry had written off, and did it by taking it entirely seriously.

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Michael Bublé

Michael Bublé is easy to patronise and hard to argue with. He arrived in the early 2000s singing standards with a full orchestra at a moment when that was commercially inexplicable, and he has sold tens of millions of records doing it.

The reason he works, where most revivalists do not, is that he is a genuinely excellent singer with proper technique and an unusually good ear for a phrase. He does not imitate Sinatra; he uses the same tools. The other reason is that he understands the repertoire is not a museum — his best records mix Cole Porter with the Bee Gees, Van Morrison, the Beach Boys and George Michael, and treat all of them as songs rather than as artefacts.

His arrangers deserve much of the credit, and the big-band charts on these records are played by first-rate musicians.

What to listen for

"Home" is his own song and his best-known — a piece of writing considerably more affecting than his standards work, and the one that proved he was not simply an interpreter.

"God Only Knows" is the boldest choice here. The Beach Boys original is one of the most perfectly arranged records ever made; taking it to a big band should be a disaster and instead reveals how strong the song is underneath.

"Kissing a Fool" is the George Michael cover, and it is arguably better than the original — the song was always a standard pretending to be a pop single.

"Cry Me a River" and "That's Life" are the swaggering ones, and the latter is where the Sinatra comparison is most earned.

"You'll Never Find Another Love like Mine" is the Lou Rawls reading and the most soulful thing on the list.

"The Very Thought of You", "This Love of Mine" and "The More I See You" are the straight ballads where the technique is most exposed.

The Naturally 7 collaborations — a vocal group who reproduce instruments with their voices — are the most interesting arrangements here, particularly "Stardust".

Go deeper

It's Time (2005) and Call Me Irresponsible (2007) are the albums where the formula is strongest, and Crazy Love (2009) is the most varied.

For the tradition: Frank Sinatra's Songs for Swingin' Lovers!, Nat King Cole's ballads, and Tony Bennett's later duet records. Harry Connick, Jr. did this a decade earlier and deserves the credit for reopening the door.

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