Michael Buble learned a valuable lesson from an in-flight encounter that would make any star cringe in their first-class seat.

Speaking to USA TODAY about his forthcoming “Buble!” televised concert special, which airs Wednesday (10 ET/PT) on NBC, the 43-year-old singer remembers a time when he settled a bet for a group of flight attendants who were convinced Buble was a reality show contestant.

“I was on an airplane, flying home from Argentina, and a flight attendant told me she was a fan, and asked me, ‘Don't get mad, but my friends and I are fighting over who's right,’ ” he recalls. "And I said, ‘What’s the question?’ And she said, ‘Did you win ‘American Idol,’ or ‘The Voice?’ Or did you just place?”

That’s enough to give any artist an ego check, let alone Buble, who’s in the middle of a sold-out world tour and whose accomplishments include four Grammys and four No. 1 albums.

“But I had an epiphany in that moment,” Buble says. “And I went and sat in my seat and I thought ... so many people in America, they don't know. They might know my name, and they might hear the music or have seen the Bubly commercial, but they really don't know."

He's referring, of course, to the tongue-in-cheek ad from the sparkling-water brand Bubly that aired during the Super Bowl, featuring a confused Buble pondering the spelling on the cans.

Clearly a man with a sense of humor, Buble says the incident actually helped inform how he approached his new special, which was filmed in an intimate concert setting and features never-before-seen photos and footage from his adolescence in Canada and early career.

“I thought, well, this is a great opportunity for me to tell a story," Buble says about the special. "A story of my life that tells, biographically, the history of how I did this and where I came from."

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