Michael Buble has it so good Living the good life: Michael Buble says he's got it easy. DECEMBER 23 last year was a great day for Michael Buble. It didn't start well. The Canadian singer had gone to the airport in Vancouver to pick up his wife, Argentinian actress, model and singer Luisana Lopilato, who was flying in with some of her family to have a winter Christmas. On the way home, Buble was concerned. "Something was weird with my wife," Buble says. The vibe was strange and I'm very sensitive. I thought she was going to tell me she'd fallen in love with someone else. Her sister was acting strangely too. I remember saying 'When we get home you're going to tell me what's going on'. I was as serious as a heart attack. Once home, Lu, as he calls her, had a present for her husband. She told me to close my eyes and when I did she'd put a little baby sock in my hands. I went crazy. It was easily the best day of my life. Learning he was due to become a father inspired a beaming Buble to take care of some unfinished music-business business. He had tried to get the Frank and Nancy Sinatra duet Something Stupid on his last two albums, but never found the right partner. In the midst of making fifth album, To Be Loved, Buble wanted to try Something Stupid again. "My first thought was to call Adele, or Katy Perry, or Rihanna or Jessie J - someone in the pop world people wouldn't expect to work with me," Buble says. His manager Bruce Allen had another idea. Both men had been obsessed by the movie Walk the Line, with Buble dropping in Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire to his live shows at the time. His manager suggested Reese Witherspoon, who played June Carter Cash, as a duet partner. "I said 'Good luck, you'll never get her'," Buble said. And he didn't. It was hard work. That work included tracking down her husband, agent Jim Toth, and people who worked with Witherspoon, who all said the actor loved Buble's music, but that music wasn't her world. "This went on for weeks," Buble said. She hadn't said no, but she hadn't said yes. Her husband said she was driving the kids crazy singing Something Stupid around the house. Buble's manager wanted him to call Witherspoon directly; Buble thought calling her was rude and would put her in a bad position if she wasn't keen. Then came impending fatherhood and a burst of confidence. "I remember telling my wife that day 'I'm going to call Reese Witherspoon'," Buble says. I thought what's the worst thing that could happen? Within minutes, they were talking on the phone. "I said to Reese 'You're one of the first to know, I'm pregnant, we're going to have a baby'," Buble recalls. She was so cute and so excited for me. I don't think we talked about anything other than that for the first five minutes. I then told her I knew this was not your world, that she was out of her comfort zone. I'd read her interviews where she said she was terrified doing Walk the Line. I said 'I love your voice, I know what I'm doing, I know your voice is perfect for this. Buble suggested recording it at her house, so she was comfortable, and with no cameras to document the moment. It was about us making great music together, not publicity. I did the same thing with Nelly Furtado and Ron Sexsmith when I sang with them, they initially thought 'What? But I knew it would be right. So I told Reese we'd record it and she'll decide if it goes on the record or not. If it's not perfect, it's out. I had enough songs to replace it. Once they were recording the track - in a studio - Buble and producer Bob Rock were relieved. "She was exactly who you want her to be," Buble says. She sang the first line and I stopped her, stopped the whole recording. I looked at Bob and said 'I'm a f----ng genius!' Not 'Reese, that was amazing' but 'I'm a genius'. I knew in three seconds it was perfect. That night I emailed her the song and she said 'I can't believe it's me'. We went out for dinner a few nights later and she did a toast and said 'This is truly one of my Top 5 career moments'. That blew me away. To Be Loved had its genesis when Buble was in Argentina, listening to his musical director Alan Chang's Christmas album in the middle of summer. He heard the Bee Gees' To Love Somebody and suddenly found a vision. I called Bob and said I want to make a soul record. I could just hear To Love Somebody as a Motown song. He recorded Young At Heart as a tribute to Frank Sinatra, Have I Told You Lately as a homage to Elvis Presley and Randy Newman's You've Got a Friend in Me after falling in love with it in Toy Story. The Jackson 5's Who's Lovin' You was a song his band would play on the tour bus as they got drunk and played Wii. "They were Wii parties, but that doesn't sound right," Buble says. There's also more originals than any Buble album to date. After All was written with Bryan Adams. I Got It Easy is an honest appraisal of how good his life is. "I've been given so much, people are dying in the dark while I'm lying in the sun," is one of the lyrics before turning into a love song for his wife. Some people hate it and some love it. It's polarising. My manager hated it. He said it was bragging. It's the opposite of bragging. I've never written a song like that before. It's saying people are hurting, but if you can afford to buy the record you've got it pretty good. Close Your Eyes is the album's big original ballad, like Something Stupid, it's already been earmarked as a potential single. "It's a tribute to strong women," Buble says. I started writing it about Lu, but it's also about my mother and my sister and my wife. Some idiot called women the weaker sex. In my life, the reason I've got through the worst things were strong women. Not just me, but my father and my grandfather and my friends, they've had women literally carry them through bad times when they couldn't do it by themselves. And I married a strong, strong woman. The pair met in 2009, and wed two years later. A superstar in Argentina, Lopilato will give birth to their son in August, with Buble already declaring his future tours will be more "manageable" to give him more family time. "It'll be three weeks on, two weeks off," he says. I used to open for Jay Leno, I used to ask him how to build a career. He'd say 'Go into their back yards. They'll never forget you'. So that's what I do. Buble is also happy to put his career on hold and become a house husband. "My wife's career is just as important as mine," he says. We're going to really work together in scheduling. When she's not working for too long she's not the happiest woman. Happy wife, happy life. I've told her, if I have to, I'll do this tour and if it means I take a year off and I follow her and hang out on the set with her, I think that's fair. It's that happy wife and the joy of fatherhood (Buble's screen saver is a picture of his wife's stomach) that has given the singer a new perspective. While he's still embarking on a ruthless promotional schedule for To Be Loved, something has changed inside. "I love this record, I know it's the most badass record I've ever done," Buble says. But you know what, I don't know how it's gonna do. And for the first time, I don't care. I literally haven't asked where the single is anywhere. Before it was all-encompassing. I'd call my manager and ask for the sales in all the countries, I'd want to see all the marketing plans. I was so hands on. I'm still like that with the art. I'm more controlling than I've ever been artistically from production to making videos. But with the other side of it, the business side . . . I don't know how to feel about it. Maybe my best record won't be successful this time because I'm not making it so with my mind. I felt like before I'd will things. It was going to be because I knew it was going to be, I told the universe it was going to be and it was. Now it's like I hope my baby is healthy, I hope my wife is good. HEAR To Be Loved (Warner), out tomorrow