Today, things look very different for the Canadian singer. Speaking to me on the phone from Leipzig, where he’s on a European tour that will see him land in Dublin for two shows in May, is a contented family man who has finally learnt to be at ease with himself and his own success. So how did he get here, to this better place?

“The same way anyone does – with age,” he tells me. “Through suffering, you can make choices. Everyone goes through difficult times. With age and life experience comes maturity. There are millions of human beings who have suffered and will have a fork in the road and that fork in the road will lead to one of two places: to bitterness and resentment, or it will lead them to love and forgiveness.

“Sure, I worked on myself. I wanted to better myself. But honestly man, it’s about getting older,” he says. “It’s important that if we make mistakes that we learn from them. It’s important that we keep growing. I sound like Tony f**king Robbins right now! I think, like all of us, there’s a desperation to find inner peace, to find the answers that we’re looking for.”

Michael Bublé was born on September 9, 1975, and grew up in a blue-collar neighbourhood of Burnaby, British Columbia, with his father Lewis, a salmon fisherman, his mother Amber and two younger sisters.

With his dad away fishing a lot, young Michael would go to his maternal grandfather Mitch Santaga’s house nearby and listen and sing along with a broom as a microphone to his collection of albums by Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby.

Sometimes when Mitch, a plumber, would be doing work in a local club he would ask the owner could his teenage grandson do a few numbers.​

“For me as a kid music was a deep and rich experience – almost a religious experience. I had no idea what I would be. But I knew music would be a part of it. I just knew. It was part of me,” he says.

At 15 and 16, he would go out in the summer and fish off the coast of Vancouver with his father and through the winter he would play clubs, restaurants, bars. Fishing with his father on the boat in all weathers, he would kiss the first salmon that came on board, on the lips, for luck.

“I would go out on an 80-foot vessel and I would sing all the time at the stern. I was only a kid and the crew around me were in their mid-20s and their 30s. They introduced me to music I had never heard of – the biggest was Van Morrison.

“There was a guy on the boat who traded me a cassette of Van Morrison’s Greatest Hits. It was like the heavens opened. To this day, I think he is the greatest singer-songwriter who ever lived.”

What songs resonated with him at first?

“When you start out, it’s the ones that everyone knows, like ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ or ‘Gloria’,” he says. “It’s very much like food. The sweeter songs are the ones you love and then in the end you like songs like [sings from ‘Wonderful Remark’: “That was a wonderful remark/I had my eyes closed in the dark/I sighed a million sighs”].

“It was a mixture of soul and jazz. I think if there was any artist that sent me in the direction I went, it was Van Morrison. It was like jazz and philosophy.”

At the age of 18, he won British Columbia Youth Talent Search. He did small gigs for seven years all over North America but was going nowhere. He imagined himself spending the rest of his life fishing on his father’s boat.

In the summer of 2000, fate intervened when he performed at the wedding of Michael McSweeney, a close associate of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, in Montreal. One of the guests was top international producer David Foster (who signed a young unknown band The Corrs in 1995). Foster was sufficiently impressed to help get him signed to Warner Brothers.

In 2003, Bublé released his self-titled album. It featured Morrison’s ‘Moondance’ as well as Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, among others, and sold over three million copies. He’s since won four Grammy Awards and sold over 80 million albums.

Success, when it came, wasn’t an easy thing to handle, he says. He believes that fame can stunt your growth.

“I’m a big fan of Justin Bieber,” he says by way of explanation. “That young guy was so famous. He had such a blinding light on him at such a young age. I think he did a pretty remarkable job coming through it.

“You know, it’s not just fame. You are making a lot of people a lot of money. You become a thing. It’s difficult to find your way. People are making millions of dollars off you. You are a product. It’s hard to know who loves you for the right reasons.”​

He says people’s view of him “is their problem, negative or positive. You know what, man? The one thing I’m good at is being me. I never had to pretend to be something else. Until people come to one of my shows, they don’t get it. If you’ve never seen me live, then you can’t fully understand what I do.

“As far as the personal side, the people who love me know who I am. That’s one of those things you can’t control. You hope people think you’re good and cool. It’s funny because I’m a people-pleaser.”

Where did that come from?

“I really don’t know. That’s a good question. I was always sensitive. And when I say ‘sensitive’, I don’t mean that in any kind of weakness. If you and I went out for dinner and we were in a group of people I would care about how you felt.

“It would matter to me that you were comfortable and included in the conversation. It would matter to me that the people I was with treated you with respect and never took away your dignity.

“That kind of moral compass comes from my mom and dad, being raised right. That has an impact when I walked out onto a stage. If it is 80,000 people at my concert and if one of them is staring at their wrist-watch I will concentrate on that one person and want very much for their experience to be great.

“It’s interesting, as life goes on I hope as a parent I’ve given to my kids the ability to live in the present. My kids are sitting right here listening to me as I talk to you. I always say to them that if we can somehow live in the now we’ll have a good life, because that’s all we can really control is what we are doing right now. “

Bublé met his actress wife Luisana Lopilato – his saviour of sorts – in Buenos Aires at one of his concerts in 2008. In November 2009, they were engaged when he proposed in front of her family in Argentina. The engagement was kept secret until early 2010.

In 2011 they had two weddings – one in Argentina and one in Canada. In 2013, their son Noah was born. In 2016, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. In March 2017 after 18 months of treatment, Noah was given the all-clear. Now nine years of age, he has three younger siblings: brother Elias (7) sister Vida (4) and baby Cielo, born in August last year.

I ask how Noah is now. “All my kids are good. All four of them are well. “

What Michael went through must have shifted his perspective on life?

“You know, I take in a lot in my life now – whether that’s as a father or as somebody who meets somebody on the street, I really try to be present. And it all changes you. I learn lessons every day. I’m a work in progress. I have an attitude of gratitude. Part of me being in the moment is taking so much time in the past,” he says, referring to his son’s illness. “I think it’s better for him and me and for my kids to be that way.”​

Bublé the family man is a long way from the man who once boasted to Q Magazine in 2003 that he had been intimate with five women that week alone. He tells me a story to illustrate his evolution.

“I was sitting in a hamburger restaurant in Leipzig a few hours ago with my four kids. The young waiter came over [puts on German accent]: ‘Ya, four kids, respect!’ And I said to him: ‘Do you have any kids?’ And he said: ‘No way, man. I’m 24 years old!’”

Michael laughed and told him what he considered a great personal truth. “You know what man? Enjoy every second of it. This is a great time of your life. You’re single and you feel very carefree but I want you to know that one day you may want to have kids.

“I told him that I absolutely loved when I was his age the freedom to do what I wanted. But you know what? One day you’re going to hold that kid and you’re going to fall in love with life all over again.

“It’s interesting for me because my father said this to me the other say: ‘Partner’ – he calls me Partner – ‘I love you but I love my grandkids even more. I said: ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ He said: ‘Hopefully one day you’ll find out, that it just keeps getting better…’”

What age is his father?

“Sixty-seven,” he says. “I’m 47.”

You’re only a child, I say.

“It’s hilarious when you say that because when I met my wife, I was 32 and she was 21. She used to make so much fun of me. She’d say: ‘Hey, old guy. Am I ever going to be that old?’ I’d say to her: ‘Shit, I’m not that old. I’m only 32 years old. One day you’re going to be 32 years old and I’m going to break your balls.’

“She’s 35 now and I don’t let a day go by without me going: ‘Hey, I can’t believe I am with this gorgeous… middle-aged woman!’ And she’ll say: [Laughs] ‘Shut up!’”

Was Luisana unbearable when her country won the World Cup in December?

“I was unbearable,” he says. “Because that’s my country now too. My babies are Argentinian. I’m hoping to get my Argentinian passport. But Argentina lost the first game [1-2 against Saudi Arabia], we were all miserable. But we won in the final, it was different to what I expected.

“When Gonzalo Montiel scored the goal to win the final [after goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez saved two penalties in the shoot-out] I expected pandemonium to break out but it was the opposite. It was dead quiet.

“When I looked around the table they were weeping. I realised at that moment it was more than a soccer match. It was far more than a footie game. This was about the soul of the country. It was a wonderful, emotional moment. My wife is good friends with Lionel Messi,” he says of Argentina’s most celebrated player.

Does she love Messi first and Michael Bublé second?

“Probably. But I love my wife as much as I love the goalkeeper of Argentina. And my kids keep me young. I’ve got four of them, so I’ve been doing a lot of Lego. I see life through their eyes. I have that child-like wonderment.”

Bublé believes his huge popularity in Ireland (he played to 60,000 people in Croke Park in 2018) is because of “my Canadianism. There is a definite comfortable fit between people from Canada and Ireland.

“When I play Ireland I feel like I can be completely myself. I didn’t have to worry about being politically correct. Even doing my first TV interview in Ireland, I felt at home.” He’ll be returning ‘home’ next month for two shows at the 3Arena in Dublin on May 13 and 14.

What goes through his head late at night?

“How lucky I am,” he says. “I’ve been through a lot. There weren’t all ups. There weren’t all downs. Listen, man, I will tell you the honest truth. Last night at midnight I was lying in bed beside my wife and our kids were sleeping in the hotel room. She looked at me and grabbed my arm and she said: ‘Michael, we’re so lucky.’

“Then we fell asleep. That’s how I feel. I love what I do so very much. It sounds boring, like a cliché. I f**king love what I do. This is all I ever wanted my whole life. I had no idea that I would be lucky enough to have kids and have this beautiful wife. I have a lot of satisfaction and fulfilment out of my career. I can’t believe it sometimes. “

“We were driving into Hamburg last night – into this city where The Beatles started – and my wife turned to me and said: ‘Mike, can you believe that all these people know you?’ And I said: ‘No, I can’t believe it.’ You know, 20 years ago I was sitting on a stern of a boat in Vancouver singing Van Morrison songs…”​

Michael Bublé plays Dublin’s 3Arena on May 13 and 14. Tickets from €89.50, including booking fee, are available from Ticketmaster.

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