The Degenerate’s Corner: Michael Bublé scoring a 2018 Christmas number one

This isn’t a literary exercise. This isn’t a place where difficult ideas are confronted, or even a place where worthwhile information is communicated. This thing right here is about as close as you can get to a gutter on your webpage. This might just be the journalistic equivalent of the crunchy sock tucked under your eighth-grade brother’s mattress. So while I hope some part of you enjoys what you’re about to read, I’d strongly suggest that you disinfect after doing so.

Welcome to the Degenerate’s Corner. Once a week we come together to examine the latest in pop culture, all through the obscure, legal-ish lens that is an online novelty bet. Maybe you’re looking to see the odds of Pete Davidson and Big Sean being admitted to a burn unit, or you might just be curious about the likelihood of El Chapo really being a misunderstood poppy farmer. Either way, you’re in the right place.

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE PROCEEDING TO PLACE A BET OR ALERT THE AUTHORITIES: While the odds are real, our endorsement isn’t. We don’t claim any responsibility for losses or winnings resulting from a bet placed. Read this for your enjoyment, and think long and hard before trying to use these odds to turn your student loans into a down payment.

Michale Bublé to have a 2018 #1 Christmas album – 16.00 (Ladbrokes)

Since his 2003 LP Let it Snow, Michael Bublé has released a number one Christmas album, hosted five Christmas specials, and appeared as a special guest on two more. Regularly described as a crooner, a superficial analysis of Bublé’s career might simply peg him as a poor man’s Frank Sinatra. In reality, though, he hasn’t spent the last fifteen years just writing hooks about skylines; unbeknownst to most of us, he’s been quietly but diligently positioning himself as the King of Yuletide.

Bublé’s Christmas track record is what makes his odds for having a Christmas number one so unexpected. Right now, oddsmakers have him listed below Ariana Grande and Ed Sheeran, which isn’t surprising given those two’s star power. But what’s baffling is that Bublé doesn’t even crack the top ten. Abba, The Spice Girls, and Queen, despite none of them being active in the last decade and some of them having long-deceased frontmen, are all ahead of Bublé! That kind of oversight is the gambling equivalent to a rip in the matrix, and whenever that happens, it means there’s money to be made.

Bublé exists in a place between sex symbol and altar boy, and that place is called profitability. His rugged looks and sweeping baritone make him a conch shell for the 21st-century, ageing, sexually repressed white woman, and what those ladies may lack in streaming subscriptions they more than make up for in expendable income. These are the people that buy a physical copy of your Christmas album for themselves as well as all their nieces and nephews, which is exactly what makes you a commercial bully on the holiday charts.

Nothing in gambling is constant, and that includes the odds. As long as bookies get paid, they don’t care if they’re right, so that means they need to make sure that there’s money in all of their pots. If for some reason a lot of bets are being placed on some underdog, then that underdog’s odds will be improved to reflect that, and vice versa. That’s what’s about to happen with Bublé. Last Friday, Bublé dropped Love, and where everyone else sees a cover album of classic ballads, I see a late-fall primer for the seven-part Nativity-themed musical he undoubtedly has in the works. It’s only a matter of time before the bookie see it too.