Michael Bublé hosts the 2018 Juno Awards in Vancouver, on March, 25, 2018. Bublé will return to host the awards ceremony for a third time in 2025.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
When Michael Bublé was recently contacted by a company to use one of his songs for an upcoming project, he suggested he would like to write a brand new tune instead. He was told there was no time, that they needed it in one week. “That’s okay,” Bublé said. “Gimme three days.”
The result is Maybe This Christmas, a city-set, soul-ballad duet with an emoting Carly Pearce, co-written with Jann Arden.
“It’s amazing,” Bublé told The Globe and Mail. “You get into the situation where you’re rushed, and the art just comes. And no joke, I think it’s one of the great songs that I’ve written – I mean top five.”
Five of his songs have won Junos, as it happens. And Bublé, it was announced Friday, will host the 2025 Juno Awards, to be held in his Vancouver hometown. The pop crooner has won 15 Junos (and five Grammys) in all. He hosted the ceremony twice previously, in 2013 and 2018, and withdrew from hosting the 2017 awards to care for his ill son after a cancer diagnosis.
Pop-punk icons Sum 41 will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and perform at the 2025 Junos. The retiring band’s farewell tour begins in January.
As well, Riley O’Connor, long-time chairman of concert promoter Live Nation Canada, is to be presented with the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award. The honour recognizes individuals who have contributed to the growth and development of the Canadian music industry at home and around the world.
The Junos, run by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, were involved in a minor controversy in September when an internal memo obtained by The Canadian Press revealed that four categories – children’s album, reggae recording and Christian/gospel album and international album – were going to be put on “hiatus” for the 2025 awards.
It was a bad look for the annual showcase of Canadian music to remove the categories, particularly reggae. Within weeks, the Junos announced that only the international album award would be shelved. Two new categories (for non-performing songwriters and South Asian music) have been added.
Because Bublé’s duet with the American country singer Pearce was released this late in 2024, it will not be eligible for a Juno next spring. In a coincidence, another duet with the exact same song title was released a week before the Bublé-Pearce single debuted.
Rock star Stevie Nicks and retired professional football player Jason Kelce collaborated on a cover of the other Maybe This Christmas, written by Canada’s Ron Sexsmith. Kelce is the brother of Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, the all-pro boyfriend of Taylor Swift.
“I love the Kelce Brothers,” Bublé said. “They know I’m a big Kansas City guy. I go down there and get to hang with the coach, and I’m friends with the general manager, Brett Veach. I get to visit the facilities and chuck the football around with Patrick Mahomes. I’m like a little kid.”
Bublé and his actress-model wife Luisana Lopilato have four kids. The superstar singer and one of a quartet of “coaches” on this season’s of NBC’s reality-competition show The Voice says he looks forward to Christmas every year because he sees it through his children’s eyes, but that not everyone enjoys tidings of comfort, joy and Platinum Records.
“For a lot of people, the time of year is scary,” said the singer whose biggest-selling album is 2011’s Christmas. “They’re vulnerable, they feel alone. The song Maybe This Christmas is a duet, but I didn’t want it to be romantic.”
Like the same-named Sexsmith song, the Maybe This Christmas written by Arden and Bublé is hopeful. But theirs is tinged with sadness, and, for Bublé, personal.
“I had heard a friend of mine had fallen on hard times,” he said. “He had gone from being a regular guy with a good job and kids, to being on the street, finding himself addicted. I did my best to help him come through, and he’s doing great now. But it was heavy for me. I wrote it about him.”
The 54th annual Juno Awards broadcasts and streams from Vancouver’s Rogers Arena on March 30, on a variety of CBC platforms. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Nov. 29.
