Let's start with a question for the Michael Buble faithful: You have heard Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Bobby Darin, Ben E. King and Van Morrison, right?

They were/are among of the greatest pop singers of all time, bringing bottomless quantities of warmth, soul, grit and character to their songs.

Michael Buble is not them. Not even close.

You'll say "Why do you have to compare them?" and I'll answer that right now: He was singing their songs last night at the Petersen Events Center.

It takes an alarming degree of hubris to mess with such songs as "For Once in My Life," "World on a String," "Mack the Knife" and "Georgia." (For better or worse, we've actually gotten used to it via "American Idol.") That swagger and confidence is certainly part of the young Canadian crooner's appeal.

Mr. Buble is a good singer but far from a great one and nowhere near a classic one -- at least not at this tender age of 34. He doesn't have a powerful instrument or a particularly warm or rich one. He doesn't wow you with gorgeously held notes, deep emotions or daring interpretations. In fact, at times he struggled with some of the basics, like mumbling through lyrics in the lower register or startling us with a sudden, mistaken loud note on a hushed piano version of "The Best of Me."

While he's not yet a candidate for the vocal hall of fame -- and don't write in that I'm not either, because I know that -- he is a good showman and looks great in a black suit, fronting a 13-piece band with eight horns. Those guys mentioned at the outset didn't kick around giant beachballs or walk through the crowd to a central stage kissing people along the way (the young Sinatra would have been torn apart).

At one point, he confessed that his idols weren't those classic crooners but actually Michael Jackson, leading him into a crotch-grabbing run at "Billie Jean." Mr. Buble is quite the comedian if you're game for off-color humor, such as the, um, "manhood" of the fine opening act Naturally 7 or a joke on whether a guy was "gay" for dragging his wife to this show rather than the other way around. In talking about Pittsburgh having scored Canadian heroes Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby, he actually made a certain lewd gesture to the crowd in mock jealousy.

Anyway, back to the music. He did offer a striking opening with that Bond-like "Cry Me A River," probably his best moment. As his set list rolled on though, touching upon standards, pleasant originals such as "Home" and "Everything," and latter-day pop tunes like "Heartache Tonight," it was impossible to put the original versions out of mind. So many of the songs -- Van Morrison's "Crazy Love," Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones," Leon Russell's "A Song for You," among them -- were sung by people with distinctive, even wildly eccentric voices. By comparison, Mr. Buble's is, well, rather tame. And vanilla. (A set of more obscure old gems would help avoid those comparisons.)

Nonetheless, he was greeted with open arms because he does offer a respite from modern-day rock and R&B. His adoring, mostly female fans got to enjoy timeless classics, rarely heard in arenas, from a charming, handsome man with sincere enthusiasm for the music. That counts for something.

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.