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Call Him Irresponsible

His music and moves are more evocative of Frank Sinatra than a "modern day" heart-throb, but when Michael Bublé sings the standards he finds a way to make them his own.

"My fans are five-years-old and 95 years-old," he told CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers. "They're white and they're black, and they're gay and they're straight and they're rich and they're poor. There's just people that like great music."

More than anything Bublé says he strives to be an entertainer. Since his self-titled debut in 2003, he's sold more than 12 million albums.

His latest "Call Me Irresponsible" hit the charts at No. 1 and went platinum. His concerts are selling out around the world and somehow Bublé has done it singing songs much older than he is.

"It's way easier for me to write a song, cause no one can compare it to anything you know," he said. "But when I cover a great standard , you know, you can say, 'Well, I've heard that by Tony Bennett, or I've heard it by Streisand or Sinatra or Sammy or Dean or Mel or the Mills Brothers, - you can go on you know, there's a, some of them have been covered by 40 or 50 great acts and so when I cover a song like that and I interpret a song, conceptually it's important for me to come up with something that's fresh, you know, to breathe life into this."


Photos: In Concert
Bublé 's career began at a small theater on Vancouver's Granby Island, where he began performing at as a teenager.

"A lot of the other places I played, the night clubs, have been have long since been burned down and turned into furniture stores or whatever the heck it is they do with them," he said. "It did get to that point where I was about 26 and I said, 'I've tried my best, I tried for 10 years and I didn't get my break."

Bublé says it took him 16 frustrating years to hit the big time.

"I think of how naïve I was to keep going and to think this little break or this stepping stone was another stepping stone towards where I was going," he said.

Bublé's break came - in his words - just in time. A performance at the wedding of then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's daughter caught the ear of music impresario David Foster. But Bublé had to convince record company execs there was still life in the old songs.

"I said, 'There's room, you know. This is a great genre of music,' and I said 'This the greatest gift that America's ever given to the arts, and surely there is a place for me,'" Bublé said.

These days, he's carefully adding new songs to his repertoire - songs he wrote himself like "Everything," "Lost" and "Home."

"I think it's important to show that growth to the public to the critics at the same time I won't want to turn my back on all those people that we so into what I was doing, and by the way I'm so into what I was doing and I wouldn't want to turn a 180 and you know all of a sudden say, 'Well now I'm gonna do you know, pure pop,'" he said.

Bublé first heard the classic tunes he loves as a little boy spending time with his grandfather, while his father, a salmon fisherman, was out at sea.

"I fell in love with this music and, even at a young age, really young, 6, 7-years old, 8-years-old, was listening to it and I said to my grandfather at about 10 or 11, 'Boy oh boy, I love this," Bublé said. "And he went, 'You do?' So it was really cool. It was a way for a grandfather and a grandson to bond, I guess. It was one of the many things that we sort of mutually loved and it wasn't, I was never a force fed thing. I loved the stuff."

And this 32-year old Canadian has also got a playful personality to go along with his pitch perfect pipes. He radiates rat pack cool - without the martinis. Bublé is irreverent, risqué and even sometimes a little juvenile; but audiences can't get enough and he wants people to live him.

"It's one of my favorite things about me, and one of my least favorite things about me," he said. "I find it to be weak sometimes, you know, I, really wish that I would be like one of those people who say 'I don't give a crap what this person thinks about me or what they say.' Do you know what I mean? My skin is very soft and, I'm sensitive. I'm a man, but I'm sensitive."

Bublé says he won't change who he is: outspoken and open, and sometimes, according to his mom Amber, too open, especially with the media.

"Ever since first started in this business, whenever he was gonna do a radio show or TV and anything I sweat, I absolutely sweat 'cause I never know what he's gonna say," she said. "When he says something stupid i want to smack him, but that's life. But I am so proud of him. I'm proud that he hasn't changed. I'm so proud. And if he ever started to change I'd phone him and, and, and take him right down anyway. I wouldn't let that happen."

Which may explain why he shuns the party circuit and often brings his family or his actress girlfriend - Emily Blunt from the "Devil Wears Prada" - on the road with him.

"To me, it reeks of insecurity to be bouncing around trying to be cool," Bublé said. "Cool is as cool does. How many people wish they had what I have. I have this great life, this surreal life where I go out on the road and I sing for 10,000 people every night and then instead of getting on my tour bus and coming off a huge high and doing a line of coke, I come back on the bus and have a beer with my mom and dad."

"I look at jobs, you know and I think about what I'm doing for my work and basically I get up for an hour and a half and sing songs that I love and basically, listen, if you showered with me, you'd understand that I do this on my own anyway," he continued. "And you guys are welcome to shower with me anytime."

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