Michael Steven Bublé was born on September 9, 1975, in Burnaby, British Columbia, to Lewis Bublé, a fisherman, and Amber, born Santaga, a homemaker. His great-grandparents on both sides had come to Canada from Italy, and he holds Italian citizenship alongside his Canadian one. From the age of 14 he spent six summers on commercial fishing boats with his father. The music came from his maternal grandfather, Demetrio Santagà, a plumber from Preganziol, near Treviso, who played him his collection of jazz and swing records and paid for his singing lessons. Bublé has said the Mills Brothers were the first group that made it click for him, and AllMusic's biography adds Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra to the records his grandfather put on. When Bublé was 16, the same grandfather got him his first nightclub bookings by offering the clubs plumbing work in exchange for stage time.

At 18 he won a local talent contest and was disqualified for being underage. The organizer, Bev Delich, entered him in the Canadian Youth Talent Search instead, he won that, and she became his manager for the next seven years. Those years were clubs, conventions, cruise ships, hotel lounges, shopping malls and talent shows, plus a musical revue called Swing that toured the United States. He recorded three independent albums, First Dance, Babalu (2001) and Dream (2002), appeared in a 1997 Bravo! documentary called Big Band Boom, became a regular guest on Vicki Gabereau's national CTV talk show, and earned two Genie Award nominations in 2000 for songs he wrote for the film Here's to Life!.

The break came through a business party where Michael McSweeney, an aide to former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, heard him and passed a copy of his self-financed album to Mulroney and his wife. Bublé was then invited to sing at the wedding of the Mulroneys' daughter Caroline, where he performed Kurt Weill's "Mack the Knife" and was introduced to the producer David Foster. Foster was reluctant to sign him to his 143 label because he did not know how to market the music. Bublé moved to Los Angeles to press his case, and Foster agreed to produce an album if Bublé raised $500,000 toward the costs, which he did. Foster ended up carrying the production under 143, with Reprise distributing and no assurance of Warner Bros. support, and Bruce Allen, the manager Bublé had been pursuing for years, signed him after Foster did.

Michael Bublé came out on February 11, 2003. It is a standards album with Los Angeles jazz players in the rhythm section and a split between Foster's pop-leaning charts and arrangements by jazz writers. Bill Holman arranged "Fever," John Clayton arranged "Moondance," and Johnny Mandel arranged and produced "Summer Wind" and "That's All." Foster arranged most of the rest, including the Bee Gees' "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," on which Barry Gibb sang backing vocals. Brian Bromberg played bass on most tracks, and the drummers included Vinnie Colaiuta, Joe LaBarbera and Frank Capp. It reached the top ten in Canada and the United Kingdom and number one in Australia, and it won him the 2004 Juno Award for New Artist of the Year. A live CD and DVD, Come Fly with Me, followed in March 2004.

It's Time (February 8, 2005) reached No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and made him a jazz-chart fixture: Guinness World Records lists it with 79 non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Traditional Jazz Albums chart, a record as of 2020. Its credits are the most jazz-dense of his major-label run. Christian McBride plays bass on "The More I See You," a big-band arrangement by John Clayton with Jeff Hamilton on drums, Tamir Hendelman on piano, Anthony Wilson on guitar and Rickey Woodard taking the tenor solo. Clayton also arranged "Can't Buy Me Love" and "How Sweet It Is," Bill Holman arranged "A Foggy Day," and "I've Got You Under My Skin" uses Nelson Riddle's original chart with orchestration by Sammy Nestico. Chris Botti is the trumpet soloist on "Song for You." The album also holds the pop side of Bublé's work: "Home," co-written with his musical director Alan Chang and Amy Foster-Gilles, went to No. 1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, and "Quando, Quando, Quando" is a duet with Nelly Furtado. He won four Junos in 2006, including Album of the Year, and the next two Grammy cycles nominated It's Time and the live Caught in the Act (November 15, 2005, recorded at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles for a PBS broadcast, with Chang directing a band that included Jumaane Smith on lead trumpet) for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. He lost both times to Tony Bennett.

Call Me Irresponsible (May 1, 2007) went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in its second week and won the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 50th Grammy Awards in February 2008, his first. It opens with "The Best Is Yet to Come" in an arrangement by John Clayton, with a horn section from the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Jeff Hamilton on drums and Gerald Clayton on keyboards. Bill Holman arranged the title song, and Johnny Mandel arranged and co-produced "Dream." The album also includes his own "Everything" and a duet with Boyz II Men on "Comin' Home Baby," the Bob Dorough and Ben Tucker tune that Mel Tormé took into the US Top 40 in 1962. Two more albums then won Grammys in the same category: Michael Bublé Meets Madison Square Garden at the 52nd ceremony in January 2010, and Crazy Love (October 2009), which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won at the 53rd in February 2011. Peter Erskine and Joe LaBarbera are among the drummers on Crazy Love, Bill Holman and John Clayton are credited for orchestration and arrangement, and "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)," a hit for Dinah Washington and Brook Benton, is a duet with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, recorded at Daptone Studios in Brooklyn.

Christmas (October 2011) held No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for the last four weeks of 2011 and the first week of 2012, with Alan Broadbent among its orchestrators and Don Sebesky credited for the orchestration of "White Christmas." To Be Loved (April 2013), produced by Bob Rock, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won his fourth Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album Grammy at the 56th ceremony in January 2014. Nobody but Me (October 21, 2016) mixed standards with newly written pop songs, co-produced by Bublé with several pop producers, and was nominated for the 2018 Grammy. That year his eldest son was diagnosed with a liver cancer, hepatoblastoma, and Bublé canceled a planned tour and stepped back from music; the boy has since recovered. Love (November 16, 2018), his first release in two years, was overseen largely by David Foster, whom Bublé coaxed out of studio retirement, and was nominated for the 2020 Grammy.

Higher (March 25, 2022, Reprise) set Paul McCartney's "My Valentine," which McCartney produced, beside Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home to Me," a duet with Willie Nelson on Nelson's "Crazy," and originals co-written by Bublé. It won the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album Grammy at the 65th ceremony in February 2023, his fifth win, and all five of his Grammys are in that one category. He joined NBC's The Voice as a coach for its 26th season in 2024, won that season and the 27th with his artists, and returned for the 28th, which premiered in late 2025. In autumn 2025 an It's Time 20th anniversary edition added two unreleased songs and live recordings, and in April 2026 the complete 33-song Wiltern concert from Caught in the Act was released. On June 12, 2026, he performed at the second opening ceremony of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Toronto. He married the Argentine actress Luisana Lopilato in March 2011 in Buenos Aires, and they have four children.

Bublé is a pop standards singer. His albums are built on a core of Great American Songbook and swing material, with a few newly written pop songs aimed at radio and a duet or guest slot. AllMusic's Matt Collar calls him the leading neo-crooner of his generation and lists his styles as adult contemporary, vocal jazz, standards and vocal pop. Billboard files his albums on its jazz charts, and that is the practical reason he sits near the jazz audience: his records contain real jazz arranging and playing even though he is not a jazz improviser. He has said he never learned to read or write music, and the jazz musicianship on the albums comes mainly from the writers and players around him, among them John Clayton, Bill Holman, Johnny Mandel, Alan Broadbent, Don Sebesky, Peter Erskine, Jeff Hamilton, Christian McBride and the horn sections that appear on the swing tracks.

His influences are the singers his grandfather played for him and the ones he grew up copying: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin and Sam Cooke, with Harry Connick Jr. named by AllMusic as a more modern model. He has said he uses pitch correction on his pop recordings while criticizing it as overused. How much of his catalog counts as jazz is an open argument, and the evidence is on the records: the swing and big-band tracks on Michael Bublé, It's Time, Call Me Irresponsible, Crazy Love and Christmas are well-arranged and well-played by jazz musicians, and the rest of his output is mainstream pop. The Subgenres above describe the standards and swing side of his work only.