July 6, 2009 · 12 AM

The sweet sound of Canada on the Fourth of July: Michael Buble plays MGM Grand

By Allison Duck

Michael Buble.

Photo: Courtesy

All I can say about this year’s Fourth of July is “O Canada!”

Canadian crooner Michael Buble serenaded a lucky audience at the MGM Grand Garden Arena at a special show Saturday night presented by the MGM Mirage Players Club Concert Series. The invite only event featured Buble and his 13-piece band performing Sinatra’s standards and some of his own music, as well.

I attended the show with some friends and the mother of one of the friends, who is a huge Buble fan and the proud owner of a life-sized cutout of Buble.

While I wasn’t already a fan prior to the show, Buble proved to be the total package as an entertainer. Sporting modelesque good looks and Sinatra-style pipes, he was also irreverently funny, teasing the men in the audience that their wives must have told them they were going to see MC Hammer, who had performed earlier that day at MGM’s Wet Republic Ultra Pool. However, from the opening chords of “All of Me” Buble had both male and female audience members enthralled. He went on to perform other classics like “Sway” and “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You.”

Buble’s witty between song banter included poking fun at the women who fawn over him like seals and revealing his possible hotel room number. “I’m in Skyloft 21!” In the likely event that Buble wasn’t residing behind door 21, I bet the room’s inhabitants got some unexpected knocks on the door last night from rabid female fans.

Buble psyched out the crowd after the well-known finger snapping at the opening of “Fever” when he launched into a timely rendition of “God Bless America” before returning to the expected song. And, after encouraging the concertgoers to “ignore the ushers” and rush the stage, he brought the crowd to its feet with his own number, “Everything.”

Though Buble doesn’t have any scheduled Las Vegas tour dates currently listed on his Web site, he promised fans he would return to Las Vegas in the fall of ‘09 or the following spring at the latest. In the meantime, I think I need to get myself one of those life-sized cutouts.

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