Entertainer seems a woefully inadequate term to describe Michael Buble. He is that, of course. But leaving it at that sells the B.C. native and his appeal short.
Entertainer seems a woefully inadequate term to describe Michael Buble.
He is that, of course. But leaving it at that sells the B.C. native and his appeal short.
He croons. He charms. He cracks wise. He tells stories. He engages on every level and in an honest, real and personable way. He is the complete showbiz package, without being showbizzy.
Hell, earlier Monday, prior to the first of his two-night Saddledome stint, he was filmed busking with some girls in Calgary. Had he also spent the afternoon saving orphans, building homeless shelters and curing cancer, nobody would have been too surprised.
Buble is more than an entertainer and his concerts are more than a concert.
But we’ll start with the fact the show was a polished, all-pro affair, with all of the arena trappings — big lights, big screens, big band (including a local string section), b-stage in the audience — with Buble and his big, beautiful voice at the centre.
That’s where he was revealed, after some brief pyro foreplay and from behind a curtain with projected flames on it — under a spotlight, on a ramp, in a tux — natch — and the middle of things, kicking things off with a simmering version of Fever.
As always, his pipes were perfect and were put to work, albeit seemingly effortlessly, on a cover-heavy set that ran the range from Van Morrison’s Moondance, the Bee Gees’ How Can You Mend A Broken Heart and even Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, to older fare such as Try A Little Tenderness, That’s All and Come Dance With Me — the latter he introduced as being “written in 1946 by Avril Lavigne and Celine Dion.”
Which brings us to perhaps the part of the Buble experience that makes it that much more, which is that charisma and natural showmanship that makes you like him, think you know him and want to get on board for the show, no matter where your musical tastes lie.
Like other contemporary performers such as, say, Jann Arden or even Josh Groban, many of the best, most memorable moments come when he’s not even singing and seem like entirely unscripted and unplanned event. Just reactions. Genuine interactions. And actual moments.
Take an early part of the evening, when he described his shows as a date, where you get to know each other slowly and, if things went well, by the end of the night we’d be having dirty sex in his car. After spying a couple of young children up front, he bashfully corrected himself, and said he was talking about having his dirty dog Rex in his car. (That, of course, didn’t stop him from being a little ribald or, to put it in the proper parlance, working blue throughout his two-hour set.)
Or there was when he spoke of the excitement of watching the World Cup and then showed, with a great amount of glee, footage of American footie fans reacting to the last-minute goal by Portugal to tie things up during Sunday’s match.
Sure, some of the saucy, silly band — or Team Buble — introductions and even, at their core, some of the song intros are probably well-rehearsed and road-tested, but his delivery is so natural and likable that you certainly don’t care.
