Bublé the Vampire Slayer

Jeff Christensen / AP Photo Bland Canadian crooner Michael Bublé’s new album outsold the New Moon soundtrack this week, confounding pundits. Nicole LaPorte investigates the Bublé nation.

When Michael Bublé’s new album skyrocketed to the top of the charts last week, leaving, first KISS, and then—far more shockingly—The Twilight Saga: New Moon soundtrack in its wake, it seemed to defy logic. How could a Frank Sinatra-style crooner, devoid of tattoos or any other imprimatur of cool, be more popular than a mania-stirring enterprise that is rocking the world a good month before its next assault—the New Moon movie—hits us?

Fine. Bublé is cute. Young Matt Dillon-ish without the chip on his shoulder. Or a less slick Ricky Martin. And he’s known to be that most unlikely thing when it comes to a global superstar: a “good guy.”

“Talked to my mom today. Her immense love for Justin Timberlake has fizzled and now she’s moved onto Michael Bublé. Homegirl cracks me up,” Tweeted nathalief00.

But the real question isn’t so much who is Michael Bublé, as who are his fans? Who are these people who, in the last week, have scoured up 203,000 copies of Crazy Love, his third release, making it the No. 1 album in the land?

The answer, America, is: You.

Even if you didn’t know it.

For Bublé is the most American brand of the moment—even though, he’s, er, Canadian. His promoters form the very cornerstones of today’s culture: Target, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, Barnes & Nobles, and Borders, which build veritable shrines in his honor; American Idol, where Bublé has performed; and, of course, Oprah, where he appeared, strategically, the day Crazy Love went on sale.

Bublé, who’s made his name singing his way, fittingly, though the Great American Songbook and the Rat Pack, seems to live comfortably, and inoffensively, within these contours. And at a time when America wants to feel safe and secure; reassured by familiar strains from a time when things were less angst-ridden, Bublé fits perfectly into the zeitgeist.

He talks a lot about his mom and how much he loves her. Although he usually keeps religion out of it, on Oprah he said that as a teenager he slept with a big, white Bible under his pillow and prayed for success. When the Associated Press pressed him on the issue, Bublé returned to a safely non-committal zone: “It’s not that I’m into organized religion—the truth is that I don’t know… So instead of making it about a certain God, I have a relationship with that one thing. The universe. God. You can call it Jesus, you can call it Jehovah. You can call it whatever you want. Buddha if you want. Whatever.”

There are ladies in his life, but no one he couldn’t bring home to that beloved mom. (Bublé had a long relationship with the British actress Emily Blunt before they broke up and Blunt went and found herself, and is about to marry, a real Yankee sweetheart: John Krasinski of The Office.) He’s admitted to doing drugs, but nothing scary (pot), and no one even seems to remember.

Instead, Bublé boosters gush about his infectious appeal, sounding like bobby-soxers rhapsodizing about Elvis.

“He’s a big kidder, he’ll be the first one to make fun of his last name,” said Katie Megna, a promotions executive who worked with Bublé when he was first signed to Reprise Records, which released his first, eponymous, album, in 2003. “From the beginning, he always just had a sense of humor.”

In his concerts, which fans say are do-or-die experiences and incite Beatles-like mania, Bublé works the crowd and calls out to his demos, which, though predominantly older, white, and female, still includes of a fairly catholic swath of teens, gays, and straight guys dragged along by their wives or girlfriends.