Michael Bublé’s Ongoing Miracle Of Christmas
Michael Bublé might not have “Bublé Balls” or “Bublé B
By Karen Bliss
Michael Bublé might not have “Bublé Balls” or “Bublé Bits” just yet — a “missed opportunity” he said in his playful TikTok video — but he achieved one thing the Biebs didn’t this year: his 10-year-old Christmas album nudged Adele‘s spanking new winner, 30, out of the No. 1 spot in Canada.
According to MRC Data, Bublé’s Christmas reached No.1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart in week 52. Total consumption units for the week ending Dec. 30 were 11,000, while the total for Adele’s 30 was 6,500.
The previous week, Christmas, Bublé’s seventh studio album, had 13,000 consumption units, putting it at No. 2, behind Adele.
It’s not the first time Bublé has been neck and neck with Adele during the holiday season.
An old Warner Music Canada press release from 2012 reported “Christmas was first released in October 2011 and became the 2nd biggest selling holiday album in North America last year behind Adele’s 21.” It had also reigned at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album sales chart the week ending Dec. 10, 2011. According to SoundScan (now MRC Data), Christmas sold 2,452,000 copies in the U.S. that year, second to 21. In Canada, it had sold 444,000 copies by mid-Dec. Another 2012 press release from Warner Music Canada stated it had sold 7 million copies worldwide.
In 2012, Christmas became the first holiday album to win a Juno Award for album of the year. The re-release with four additional songs returned to No. 1 in Canada that year, “50 weeks after vacating it, making it the longest stretch between #1s for any record in the SoundScan era,” according to the original Warner Music Canada press release.
To date, Christmas has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide, according to the label — making it his best seller. It has had 4 billion streams (equivalent to 60 million albums) and has “annually retained a #5 position on music charts around the world.”
The original version includes such classics as It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town, Jingle Bells, Ave Maria, AlI Want For Christmas Is You, and the co-written Cold December Night.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the album, in November Warner/Reprise released a deluxe box set edition featuring a bonus CD of seven songs, two of which were newly recorded, the Bublé co-penned The Christmas Sweater and a new version of Let It Snow! recorded at London’s Abbey Road Studios with the BBC Big Band Orchestra. The collection also includes goodies like a 48-page hardbound book, “making of” DVD, and X-mas ornament.
This is the ninth non-consecutive week that the diamond-certified album has sat atop the Billboard Canadian Albums chart, making it the only album to reach No. 1 in five different calendar years. Christmas was also the No. 1 holiday album of 2021 with 14 songs from its tracklist, making it the Top 100 Holiday songs of 2021.
Now that the holidays are over, Bublé can think about touring; he has six dates in Vegas in late April/early May on the books; 15 in the UK in July at outdoor settings, such as castles; and seven in South America in November.
