Who would have thought a cover artist could be this good, and one with incredible showmanship to boot. “Cry Me a River” opened the show with the shadow play aplomb of a conductor and his orchestra; the curtains part and on came Bublé, flanked by his big jazz band. It was a rousing opener that concluded with a dazzling pyrotechnics display, marking the first song of a perfect set with clear sound and clear vocals, the instruments working really well together, neither drowning out the other. And boy does he love sliding around the stage.
Lengthy banter punctuated the start of his set, and he set the record straight with the audience on who he really is—quite the opposite of the romantic suit-wearing guy the media portrays him as. Indeed, as he said in his interview with us and fellow journalists just before the show, he is a bit of a stand-up comedian and incredibly comfortable with the audience. He takes the piss out of himself and others, although he censors himself (like we’re about to), such as when he encouraged the audience to feel free to sing along and dance: “…if you want to, sing the words. If you want to get up and dance with the person that you love, get up and dance with ‘em. If somebody is sitting behind you and they say ‘Shhhh! I’m watching Michael,’ you just say ‘F**k off’.”
Hungover from the conservative audience in his Singapore show five years ago (whom he’d talked about in our interview), he muted his f**ks for the one on Wednesday night. “They’re not going to let me back here anymore,” he quipped after a particularly cheeky comment he made. Elvis Costello said the same thing when he warned his middle-aged Singapore audience not to get too rowdy.
We don’t know why the organizers bothered with seats for the top-paying audience, when people still got up and clamored for him up front. And when he stepped off the stage and walked to the sound console at the back, here’s what happened:
We hope this audience proved livelier than the one he performed to five years back.
Our highlight was his perfect cover of a snippet of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” right down to the moonwalk, and his interpretation of Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.” The original powerful and poignant in essence, Bublé manages to match that and still add a little swing to it.
Glittering confetti showered the audience at the conclusion of final song, during which he stepped away from the mic to deliver the final words. Either his voice is really powerful enough to reach audiences in the back rows, or the mic he left behind had a very long range. He apologized for taking five years to return to our shores, and promised to come back a lot sooner next time. We wait and see.
