Every star gets their big break somehow, and for Michael Bublé, his road to becoming an applauded Grammy winner began with plenty of waterworks, But not how you might think.
Nowadays, Bublé is known as one of the silkiest voices in music and one of the most supportive Coaches on The Voice. Since joining the NBC singing competition in Season 26, Bublé has been charming audiences with his silly sense of humor and warm mentorship. But behind his effortless stage presence and polished persona lies a story that is anything but conventional.
While some music careers begin with viral videos or lucky record deals, Bublé’s ascent was rooted in something far from the confines of a recording studio: a plumbing company. Long before he achieved global superstardom, Bublé was a young man with a dream and a grandfather who would go above and beyond to see his grandson soar on the big stage.
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Yes, you read that correctly. Bublé’s road to success began with his grandfather’s expert plumbing skills and some powerful persuasion.
The shocking role plumbing played in Michael Bublé becoming a star
During a 2024 appearance on The Rich Eisen Show, Bublé opened up about how his grandfather’s plumbing company helped him gain his bearings in the music industry. Bublé grew up close to his grandfather, who showed his grandson jazz records and sparked his love for old-school crooners.
“My grandpa was a plumber for 50 years, and I was 12, 13, and he would play his old records, and I loved them,” Bublé reminisced. “And I was like, ‘I want to do that.’ And so he would take me to nightclubs and bars and stuff, and take me with these musicians and say, ‘Hey, you let my grandson up with you, I will fix your plumbing.'”
Bublé’s grandfather would swap repaired water heaters or tweaked pipes for his grandson to score a few songs with the headliner, leveraging whatever connections he could to help Bublé get his big break.
“Literally, I would get on stage and work, and then these musicians were like, ‘Oh, the kid’s not bad,'” he recalled. “And then, after years and years of that, I was playing nightclubs, and I started hiring the musicians, and I didn’t get my break ’till years later. I was about 26 or 27 when I finally got signed.”
Bublé also wrote about how supportive his grandfather was in his 2011 memoir, Onstage Offstage. “My grandpa will sit in the studio for hours while I record, and he’ll fly halfway around the world to watch me perform – even though he’s in his eighties,” he wrote in an excerpt published by TODAY. “It thrills me that I can make it happen for him because he wanted to be a singer, too: I’m living our dream.”
“I like to tell audiences how my grandpa Mitch was a plumber who’d give musicians free plumbing service if they’d let me sing with them,” he continued. “While other kids were at the mall, I was in some cheesy hotel lounge singing with guys three times my age. That’s just one small example of the effort my grandpa made on my behalf.”
Michael Bublé’s journey from the club circuit to the Coaches chair on The Voice
While Bublé benefited from the doors opened by his grandfather’s complimentary plumbing services, the “Home” singer didn’t get his big break until the 2000s after former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney played a role in discovering Bublé, as he shared in an interview with AXS-TV. After The Voice Coach performed at the wedding of Mulroney’s daughter, he was introduced to Grammy Award-winning producer David Foster.
After being signed to Foster’s label, Bublé’s meteoric rise was onward and upwards with the release of his self-titled 2003 album and the subsequent release of 2005’s It’s Time.
“It was years of playing anything that you could think of, from doing singing telegrams to a cruise ship to a lot of bars, a lot of clubs. That’s kind of the thing I was doing, the club circuits,” Bublé shared on The Rich Eisen Show, recalling that he’d work with his father in commercial fishing in the summers to support the circuit months. All that grueling work instilled an immense sense of gratitude for Bublé that he wouldn’t trade for the world.
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“When I got my break and when it happened for me… to this day, I can’t believe I’m here,” Bublé said. “I can’t believe I’m sitting with you. I’m grateful, and I think it just made me who I am. And so when I got here, I felt like I was good to go.”
Watch The Voice on NBC and Peacock.
