Michael Bublé – Call Me Irresponsible

CD REVIEW

The king of the middle of the road delivers his third album, and it does not stray far from the formula of the previous two: a bunch of crooners’ classics, a few more contemporary songs arranged to sound like crooners’ classics, and a modern pop number which invariably becomes the lead single.

Bublé interprets and reinterprets his selection of songs with some skill. He certainly stands above most of the karaoke artists that infest the nostalgia genre.

At the same time, there is no reason why one should wish to listen to Bublé sing “The Best Is Yet To Come” or “Call Me Irresponsible” when these songs have been performed much better by far superior singers. For all his enthusiasm, Bublé is not likely to deliver a definitive version of a song if it has already been handled by the likes of Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald.

So the greater interest resides with the re-interpretation of pop classics. His version of George Michael’s “Kissing A Fool” on the debut promised great things in that regard. Here Bublé entirely enfeebles Billy Paul’s roaring ’70s soul classic “Me And Mrs Jones”, robs Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man” of all its subtlety, and sleepwalks through Willie Nelson’s “Always On My Mind”.

On the credit-side, Bublé improves Eric Clapton’s dirge-like “Wonderful Tonight” by giving it the bossa nova treatment (with the help of Brazilian legend Ivan Lins).

It’s not at all unpleasant stuff, but with so much inspiring material to draw from, Call Me Irresponsible is rather too uninspired.

Listen to: Everything; It Had Better Be Tonight; Lost; That’s Life; Dream.