The queen of country music is no pushover. Reba McEntire is known for her kindness, but Michael Bublé, her fellow coach on “The Voice,” says everybody on the show knows “you don’t mess with Reba.”
On September 22, 2025, Bublé opened up about his life and work on Lewis Howes’ “School of Greatness” podcast, revealing how much he’s learned from McEntire as they’ve worked together.
Michael Bublé Says He Needs to Be More ‘Like Reba’ With Setting Boundaries
During the interview with Howes, Bublé admitted that his wife thinks he needs stricter boundaries because he can be too kind sometimes — but the Grammy-winning crooner thinks that’s one of his best attributes.
“Everybody wants to be loved,” he told Howes. “And by the way, I’m really good at what I do because I’m insecure, because I’m sensitive. Like, dude, I will look out to that arena and there’s 15,000 people, but I’m not playing to the 14,999 that are grooving. I’m looking at that one dude who’s like, who’s on his phone or who’s not (into it) … I’m like, ‘I want to break that guy. I’m gonna break that guy.'”
“I’m the same way at the dinner table,” Bublé admitted. “If you take me and hang out with your buddies and I feel like there’s a silence, there’s someone who’s not comfortable, I can’t handle it, man. I got to make sure that, like, everyone must feel good. Everybody’s feeling good and, like, that’s who I am, you know?”
“My wife tells me that I have a problem with boundaries,” Bublé said. “She tells me that people take advantage of me, that I’m too kind, and that I can still be kind, but…”
“You need to be kind but firm,” Howes interjected, to which Bublé replied, “Yeah, like Reba.”
Michael Bublé Says Reba McEntire is the ‘Real Gangster’ of the Group
NBCWhen Howes asked Bublé which female artist he most idolized, the Grammy winner named McEntire and expanded on what he meant by wanting to be able to set boundaries the way she does.
“I just love her,” he said. “You know, people will ask me often about ‘The Voice’ and they’ll say like, you know, ‘What’s Snoop like?’ … Hey, you know what? You know, Snoop is awesome, but the gangster is Reba.”
“She’s like — that woman is kind and she’s classy, but she is so her. She is. That’s it. She’s her. She is so comfy in her skin and she’s tough if she has to be, but always kind. She’s firm, but always fair. She’s just so cool, man.”
“Always with a smile, always courteous, but you know, you don’t mess with her,” Bublé added. “Nobody messes with Reba. No way.”
McEntire has been in the music business since the 1970s, with more than 50 top 10 country hits to her name, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame. But Bublé said she told him at a recent dinner that staying relevant and successful has not been easy.
He recalled to Howes, “She said to me, she goes, ‘Man I had no idea how hard it was going to be to get here … but getting here was nothing close to as hard as it is to stay.’ We were just eating sushi and she literally said to me, ‘Staying is hard.'”
Bublé continued, “It’s hard to get to the top or make it, right? It’s hard to make it whether you’re an athlete and you win a championship or you’ve got some level of success in business or as an artist, you have a hit song, but it’s hard to stay a hit.”
