Michael Bublé

Bublé was born in Burnaby, British Columbia. Bublé grew up listening to his grandfather's collection of jazz records, and on his website he highlights the importance of his grandfather in encouraging his musical tastes. "My grandfather was really my best friend growing up. He was the one who opened me up to a whole world of music that seemed to have been passed over by my generation. Although I like rock and roll and modern music, the first time my granddad played me the Mills Brothers, something magical happened. The lyrics were so romantic, so real... the way a song should be for me. It was like seeing my future flash before me. I wanted to be a singer and I knew that this was the music that I wanted to sing."

Bublé's grandfather encouraged him to learn the standards that he loved and to enter a talent contest in Vancouver which he won before a later disqualification for being underage. Not discouraged, he won first prize in a Canadian Youth Talent Search at the age of seventeen.

For the next few years, Bublé pursued a musical career with local success in North America for his theatre performances as Elvis in the Red Rock Diner road show and as a star of a musical revue called Forever Swing. He also appeared in an episode of pleth Game in 1996. He recorded three independent albums, one as a present to his grandfather. Bublé received two Genie Award-nominations in 2000 for both songs he wrote for the film Here's to Life starring fellow Canadian Eric McCormack.