It’s too obvious just to take the Canadian charm-monkey down in a bile-fest, so where to begin? He looks a bit peaky on the album cover and peakier still on the first page of the CD insert booklet (not that anyone under 40 listens to CDs). He’s lost weight. He used to be chubbier with a hint of that blank-eyed M.O.R.-damaged look which Daniel O’Donnell perfected and which grannies adore. Bublé was never just a geriatric sex daydream, though. His easy, TV chat-show demeanour is beloved of a much wider range of women, young and old. There, rather than his music, lies the secret of his success.
Bublé says his eighth album is about “love, happiness, fun and yummy things”. A 37-year-old man shouldn’t use those last two words. In truth, much of To Be Loved is Sinatra fun, a total retread but unworthy of bile, just frothy, versions of material such as “You Make Me Feel so Young” and “Something Stupid”, the latter a duet with Reese Witherspoon. There’s a dose of doo-wop too, an acoustic sally at the Eddie Cochran number “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” (with New York acappella outfit Naturally 7) and the 1960s Bee Gees tune “To Love Somebody”. At its best, as on the sassy Latin “Come Dance With Me”, To Be Loved reminds of a cheesy Disney musical, with Bublé as a louche Prince Charming sort. There’s even a cover of Randy Newman’s “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” from Toy Story.
Unfortunately, the album's also spiked with horrors such as the hideous FM treacle of “After All”, which features that totem of commuter belt awfulness, Bryan Adams. It’s one of four songs Bublé co-wrote, alongside the current single “It’s a Beautiful Day”, which sounds like someone grinning themselves to death in a toothpaste advert in Hell. Then again, to end positively, you don’t have to hose off the sleaze-slime after Bublé like, say, Chris Brown. So that’s a plus.
Watch Bublé's congenial and pleasant album trailer
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