VANCOUVER - Superstar crooner Michael Buble says he wants to be the greatest entertainer on Earth and that he also has acting aspirations.
But off stage, Buble confided he's not quite as confident. "I'm still shy and nervous and insecure," he told The Canadian Press in an interview Thursday. He had just announced his Canadian tour dates Thursday surrounded by the luxury of billionaire Jimmy Pattison's yacht.
"I keep wondering when it'll happen, and I don't mean on stage because on stage I'm great but in my life, I keep wondering when I'll walk into a room and not hunch and for when I won't be insecure and for when I won't be too loud to overcompensate for my insecurities," he said.
"I don't know, it's weird," Buble said.
"I look in the mirror and no matter what, I still see the 14-year-old kid. Maybe it's part of why people have been attracted to me as a performer. God gave me a real gift and that was to turn off the self -conscious switch on stage and honestly, I could be naked up there."
Buble, 32, said people are shocked when they see his off-stage personality and that even his girlfriend, actress Emily Blunt, couldn't believe the difference in his demeanour.
"We'd be home and I wouldn't say anything for eight hours and she'd say, 'Where is he?"'
During the interview, Buble sang the original lyrics to his hit single "Everything," a song he initially wrote as a lullaby years ago but that he later revamped because the waltz beat just didn't cut it.
He said his grandfather, Mitch Buble, inspired him as a youngster by playing records by the Mills Brothers, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra and is his biggest fan.
"We were in Chicago and there were paparazzi and everything was crazy and he just looked at me and said: 'Sunshine, I thought you would be big but not this big.'
"That's coming from the guy who loves me and believes in me more than any human being has ever. Even for him, I think, it's shocking."
"In a weird way for me, it's not, really. I tell you, I desperately wanted this," he said of the international fame he's gained.
But the Grammy-nominated singer and winner of multiple Juno awards said he always believed in himself and knew he'd make it big but that he's aiming for even bigger success.
During a chat earlier with reporters about his upcoming tour, Buble joked about doing soft porn and said he has a vision to become an icon.
He said he initially struggled with being labelled a crooner, but then realized that was the genre he fell in love as a teenager.
But with songs like "Everything," "Home" and "Lost," which has now been released on radio, Buble said he has taken his music to a new level, stretching himself as a singer, songwriter and performer and at the same time gaining a younger audience.
Buble said he recorded some of the songs on his latest album "Call Me Irresponsible" live because they bring out the emotion he longs to pack into his music.
"I sort of traded, maybe, that slick feeling for emotional truth," he said. "And there are songs that I listen to, like "Always on My Mind" from the record and "Lost," where I know I was feeling it.
"I was honest about how I felt in that moment and to me it was more important, maybe, to have things not as perfect but just so that when people hear it they can hear me smiling or hear that I'm hurting or hear that I'm sentimental about what I'm singing and that it's not just pasted together."
Buble also said he's realizing he has to be more true to himself on stage to grow as a performer.
"I think I used to feel like it was so important to be funny or charming or entertaining and I feel sometimes that the music, the interpretation, took a back seat to that and maybe I was afraid to put myself out there in that way."
Buble, whose latest CD has sold three million copies since its release in May, said he's thrilled when people in different countries sing along to his tunes during a concert but can't speak a word of English.
"I don't want to come across as being more humble than I am because I'm not, I'm an egotistical jerk," he said.
"I would love to lie to you and tell you I don't want to be an icon," he said. "I want to be the greatest entertainer on Earth."
Pointing to his manager, Bruce Allen, he said: "I want to be his biggest act."
But he acknowledged he may never scale the heights of superstardom like other Canadian singers including Bryan Adams, Anne Murray and Bachman Turner Overdrive.
"I was hungry for it when I was 16 and 17, when I was playing the bars."
