Donny Osmond

Career beginnings: 1960s and The Andy Williams Show

In 1963, Donny Osmond made his debut on The Andy Williams Show at the age of six singing "You Are My Sunshine."^[6] Osmond's brothers had been part of the show's cast since December 1962.^[7] The brothers, who soon added Donny into the group, continued to perform on the show throughout the 1960s, along with an occasional visit from their sister Marie and brother Jimmy.^[8]

Teen idol: 1971–1978

Osmond became a teen idol in the early 1970s as a solo singer, while continuing to sing with his older brothers. Osmond was one of the biggest "cover boy" pop stars for Tiger Beat,^[9] Flip^[10] and 16 magazines in the early 1970s.^[11] His first solo hit was a cover of Roy Orbison's 1958 recording of "Sweet and Innocent", which peaked at no. 7 in the U.S. in 1971.^[12][13] Osmond's follow-ups Steve Lawrence's "Go Away Little Girl" (1971) (U.S. no. 1),^[14] Paul Anka's "Puppy Love" (U.S. no. 3),^[15][16] and "Hey Girl/I Knew You When" (U.S. no. 9) (1972)^[17][18] vaulted him into international fame, further advanced by his November 20, 1972, appearance on the Here's Lucy show, where he sang Nat King Cole's "Too Young" to Lucy's niece, played by Eve Plumb, and sang with Lucie Arnaz ("I'll Never Fall in Love Again").^[19][20][21]

Comeback: 1989–1990

In the 1980s, all of the Osmonds abandoned their earlier image—which had originally been crafted to appeal to young viewers—hoping to reach a more adult audience. While his brothers moved toward country music to modest success, Donny was able to revive his career in popular music. He made an unlikely appearance as one of several celebrities and unknowns auditioning to sing for guitarist Jeff Beck in the video for Beck's 1985 single "Ambitious", which was produced by Paul Flattery and directed by Jim Yukich. This was followed in 1986 by an equally unlikely cameo in the animated Luis Cardenas music video "Runaway".^[22] He spent several years as a performer, before hiring the services of music and entertainment guru Steven Machat, who got Osmond together with English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel to see whether Machat and Gabriel could turn Osmond's image into a contemporary young pop act. They succeeded, returning Osmond to the US charts in 1989 with the Billboard Hot 100 no. 2 song "Soldier of Love"^[16] (originally announced on radio stations as "from a mystery singer") and its top twenty follow-up "Sacred Emotion". Launching an extensive tour in support of the Eyes Don't Lie record, he enlisted guitarist Dick Smith of Earth Wind & Fire and Kenny Loggins, along with keyboardist Mark Jackson.

1991–2000

Osmond was the guest vocalist on Dweezil Zappa's star-studded version of the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" which appeared on Zappa's 1991 album Confessions.^[23] The song also included guitar solos from Zakk Wylde, Steve Lukather, Warren DeMartini, Nuno Bettencourt, and Tim Pierce.^[24]

Osmond sang "No One Has to Be Alone", which was heard at the end of the film The Land Before Time IX: Journey to Big Water.^[25] He also sang "I'll Make a Man Out of You" for Disney's Mulan.^[26]

In 1998 Osmond released "Christmas at Home", which included an extra CD if purchased from Target stores.^[27][28]

2000s

In the early 2000s, he released an album of his favorite Broadway songs, and a compilation of popular love songs.^[29] In 2004, he returned to the UK Top 10 for the first time as a solo artist since 1973, with the George Benson-sampling "Breeze On By". The song was co-written with former teen idol Gary Barlow, from the 1990s UK boy band Take That, and reached number 8 on the UK charts.^[30] The associated album What I Meant to Say marked his songwriting debut; though his older brothers Alan, Merrill and Wayne had written much of the Osmonds' music in the 1970s, Donny had never had a hand in writing that music and had not publicly performed any of his own compositions until then.^[31]

His 17th solo album (and 61st album including those with his siblings), The Soundtrack of My Life, released in 2014, features a collection of cover songs with personal meaning to Osmond. He enlisted Stevie Wonder to play harmonica on the track "My Cherie Amour".^[32]

Donny & Marie in Las Vegas

Following Marie's stint on Dancing with the Stars in 2007, the pair reunited at MGM Grand's Hollywood Theatre in Las Vegas for eight performances, July 17 – 23, 2008. It was their first Las Vegas run since 1979.^[33] The show's success led to a limited six-week engagement at the 750-seat showroom at the Flamingo Hotel. The residency began in September 2008 but proved so successful that it was ultimately extended for an 11-year run totaling 1,730 performances through November 9, 2019.^[34][35] "Donny & Marie" was a 90-minute show in which they sang together at the beginning and end of the show and performed solo segments in between. The singing siblings were backed by eight dancers and a nine-piece band. The Flamingo Showroom was updated in 2014 and renamed the Donny & Marie Showroom. It reverted to its old name after their show closed. The last song they performed together there was "May Tomorrow Be a Perfect Day."^[36]

Osmond and the show earned three of the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Best of Las Vegas Awards in 2012 including "Best Show", "Best All-Around Performer" (Donny & Marie), and "Best Singer".^[37] Osmond earned "Best Singer" for a second time in the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Best of Las Vegas Awards in 2013.^[38]

Donny & Marie

After Osmond and his sister, Marie, co-hosted The Mike Douglas Show for a week in 1974, ABC’s entertainment chief Fred Silverman offered them a show of their own, The Donny & Marie Show, a television variety series which aired on ABC from 1976 to 1979.^[16][39] In honor of their impact on American pop culture, Donny and Marie received the Pop Culture Award at the 2015 TV Land Awards.^[40][41] In the past, Osmond has expressed regret that the show was canceled, and that he and Marie were unable to decide when to end the show.

Donny and Marie also co-hosted the eponymous and syndicated talk show Donny & Marie from 1998 to 2000. They would occasionally perform with musical guests. Though they received back-to-back nominations for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host in 2000 and 2001, the show was canceled.^[42]

Other hosting

For two seasons in the US, Osmond hosted Pyramid (2002–2004), a syndicated version of the Dick Clark-hosted television game show.^[43] He reprised hosting for a British version of Pyramid on Challenge in 2007.^[44] For his performance on Pyramid, Osmond was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host in 2003;^[45][46] the award went to Alex Trebek.

Osmond is one of two game show hosts to host two different versions of the same game show in different countries; the other being Howie Mandel for the American and Canadian versions of Deal or No Deal.

Osmond returned to ABC as host of The Great American Dream Vote, a primetime reality-game show that debuted in March 2007. After earning lackluster ratings in its first two episodes, the program was canceled.^[47]

Osmond hosted the daytime British version of the game show Identity on BBC Two in 2007.

On April 11, 2008, he hosted the 2008 Miss USA Pageant in Las Vegas with his sister, Marie.

He appeared on Entertainment Tonight as a commentator covering the ABC show Dancing with the Stars during his sister Marie's run as a contestant on the 5th season of the American version of the show in 2007.

Music

Osmond is mentioned in the lyrics of Alice Cooper's song "Department of Youth" on the album Welcome to My Nightmare. As the song fades, Cooper can be heard asking the youth choir backing him up, "Who's got the power?" to which a crowd of young people screams "We do!" After a couple of repetitions, this changes to "We've got the power" with a cheering response. On the final repetition, Cooper changes the question to "...and who gave it to you?" The crowd answers, "Donny Osmond!" Cooper then responds "What?!"

Osmond is featured in the song "Start the Par-dee" with Lil Yachty, written as a promotion for Chef Boyardee's throwback recipe ravioli. His most iconic line is "My name is Donny O, and you know I love my ravio's".

Film and television

In the animated television series Johnny Bravo, Osmond voiced himself as a recurring character.

He has done guest spots on numerous television shows such as Friends, Diagnosis: Murder, and Hannah Montana.

He appeared in a Pepsi Twist commercial during the Super Bowl with his sister, Marie, and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.

In 1978, he appeared in Goin' Coconuts with sister Marie. His future wife Debbie (credited as Debbie Glenn) made a cameo appearance at the end of the film.^[48][49]

In 1982, he co-starred with Priscilla Barnes and Joan Collins in the television movie The Wild Women of Chastity Gulch for Aaron Spelling.

In 1985, he appeared in a cameo role impersonating himself on Jeff Beck's video for the track "Ambitious", written by Nile Rodgers.

In 1998, Osmond was chosen as the singing voice of Shang in Disney's Mulan. He sang "I'll Make a Man Out of You".^[16]

In 1999, he starred as Joseph in the movie version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Webber's request who said, "to me, there is no better selection."

In 2002, he sang "No One Has to Be Alone" for the end credits of The Land Before Time IX: Journey to Big Water.

In the Bob the Builder special "Built to be Wild", he played Jackaroo the pickup truck.

Osmond remarked in an interview that his movie appearance on College Road Trip and upcoming appearances on two Disney Channel shows would mean that he would be coming full circle since he and his family were discovered by Walt Disney.

Osmond appears in the music video of "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "White & Nerdy". The song is a parody of Chamillionaire's "Ridin'"; Osmond's role is analogous to that of Krayzie Bone's role in the original video. Yankovic asked Osmond to appear because "if you have to have a white and nerdy icon in your video, like who else do you go for?"^[50]

In February 2019, he was revealed to have portrayed "Peacock" on the first season of The Masked Singer, where he was the runner-up.^[51]

Osmond was a guest on Kevin Nealon's web series on YouTube, Hiking with Kevin, in March 2019. The webisode begins with the two hiking through the snow at the Sundance Resort in Utah, and ends with them walking a crowded Las Vegas Strip until Osmond brings Nealon backstage at the Donny & Marie Showroom in the Flamingo Hotel, at which he was to perform that evening.^[52]

In 2020, Osmond was invited as a celebrity panelist for Fox's I Can See Your Voice, appearing on episode 5 in the first season of the show (4 November).^{[53][54][55][56]}

Osmond is mentioned in a comedic exchange in the third episode of HBO's miniseries The Night Of (2016). Two lawyers played by John Turturro and Jeannie Berlin fail to recall whether Osmond does or does not have a criminal history.^[57]

Dancing with the Stars

Osmond and professional Kym Johnson were paired for the ninth season of Dancing with the Stars. He participated in the show to prove he was a better dancer than his sister, Marie, who made it to the finals of season 5. For the first week, Donny and his partner were assigned to perform a foxtrot and a 30-second salsa. His foxtrot was said to be "too theatrical" and was scored 20/30 by the judges, however he managed to maintain a good score when his salsa scored 10 points. He performed a jive the following week, which was guest-judged by Baz Luhrmann. He scored 25 and was scored second place, called first to be safe. That following week he performed a rumba and scored 21.

The following week introduced four new dances including the Charleston, for which he scored 24. That following week, the two performed an Argentine tango. The couple scored 29/30, which was the highest-scored dance to date until it was beaten by then-top scorer and future runner-up Mýa and her 70s-themed samba. Donny also received that week's encore.

Following that week, Osmond and Johnson danced a train-station-themed jitterbug and scored a 24. He then performed a mambo against all couples and was eliminated 6th, receiving seven points for a total of 31/40. The following week, he performed a quickstep, which he quotes "was one of the worst moments of my life" and scored 24 and a team tango along with Joanna Krupa and Kelly Osbourne and received 28/30 and the encore.

In the 8th week of competition, Osmond was required to dance a ballroom and decade-themed Latin dance. His ballroom Viennese waltz received 26 but his 1980s themed pasodoble received 24 being quoted by judge Len Goodman as "the scariest, bizarre pasodoble we've ever seen" being awarded the last place on the judges' leaderboard for the first time. Following that week, he danced a tango and got advice from past runner-up Gilles Marini. He got tangled in Johnson's dress and received 21 saying the cause was that "I saw Marie." He then danced the samba to a song originally recorded by his brothers and himself called "One Bad Apple", receiving 26 and a Jitterbug scored 27. He once again was scored last place.

For the finals week, he danced a cha-cha-cha (27), a megamix dance alongside Mya and Kelly Osbourne (28), the only perfect-scoring freestyle (30) and a repeat of his Argentine tango (30) and won the competition, making him the oldest winner. As he accepted his trophy, he hugged fellow finalist Mya and brought his wife, Debbie, and sister, Marie, on stage.^[58][59]

On season 18, he guest-judged week five on Disney Night. In October 2014, he guest judged on the British version of the show, Strictly Come Dancing, on week 3 (movie week) of the 12th series.

Donny Osmond Home

Donny Osmond Home is a furniture and decor accessories collection, established in 2013 by Osmond and his wife Debbie, in collaboration with decor manufacturers.^{[72][73][74][75][76]}

Author

Life is Just What You Make It: My Story So Far, his autobiography co-written with Patricia Romanowski, is a "tell-all", Donny Osmond style. The book, released in 1999, includes stories from behind-the-scenes as a teen star, to his thought of tarnishing his "goody-two-shoes" image as he started his solo career, to him describing the intense panic attacks he suffered on stage.^[77][78][79]

Electronics and technology

Osmond's love for technology started very early in his life. Between rehearsals, homeschooling and homework, he spent his limited time off reading about electronics and the ways things work.^[80] He was reading manuals, building electronic kits, and using a soldering gun on his family’s console and Ampex tape machines, and learning the tricks of sound engineering from people such as Ed Greene by around the age of ten.^[81]

He turned his bedroom into a studio, by putting his bed on a lift that would pull it to the ceiling when not in use, so he could work on his kits. He also installed a console, waiting for the engineer to be available, and when the engineer checked on the install, he only fixed a couple of errors, impressed by Osmond's work (he was 14 at the time).^[81]

Regarding the 1976 Donny and Marie Show, he was also involved in audio. When Osmond insisted that the show's audio be recorded in multitrack, the producers balked. After the economic disaster that ended in the closure of Osmond Studios, Osmond spent a lot of time gathering the lost tapes that archived the show's episodes, finding them all around the country, from un-protected storage units, to Brigham Young University. Then, there was the problem of tape deterioration. He investigated ways on how to stop or slow the deterioration, and asked people such as AMPEX's George LaForgia and Capitol Records's Paula Salvatore. He found out that baking the tapes could slow deterioration enough to transfer them to another media.^[82] So he bought a beef jerky drying oven and installed a 220 V current to run it, after learning the stratospheric cost of doing it professionally. Then, he got his set of Yamaha 2400, his laptop, and got to work, all to transfer the episodes to DVD (which he started selling in 2006).^[83][81]

Osmond has continued to use technology, not only in his recordings, but also adapting it to his show. Regarding the use of digital audio workstations, Osmond recalled their origin in the 1980s: "... whether it be Pro Tools — I use Cubase — but everybody was afraid of it". He mentions that now, with the advent of A.I., it is happening again. "I love the prospects of AI. I love what it can do for me as a producer, as an artist — as a tool. And that's it", he said.^[84] For his 2025 show, he created an A.I./CGI version of himself at fourteen, using his grandson Daxton as frame for the avatar.^[85]

Studio albums

• The Donny Osmond Album (1971)
• To You with Love, Donny (1971)
• Portrait of Donny (1972)
• Too Young (1972)
• Alone Together (1973)
• A Time for Us (1973)
• Donny (1974)
• Disco Train (1976)
• Donald Clark Osmond (1977)
• Donny Osmond (1989)
• Eyes Don't Lie (1990)
• Christmas at Home (1997)
• This Is the Moment (2001)
• Somewhere in Time (2002)
• What I Meant to Say (2004)
• Love Songs of the 70s (2007)
• The Soundtrack of My Life (2015)
• Start Again (2021)

Television

Films

Voice dubbing and animated films and programs

Music videos