Unlike 1996’s Very Best Of, this collects all the Osmond family’s US, rather than UK, hits. Thus Little Jimmy is mercifully absent, and you still get “Crazy Horses” and the sublime Wilsonian hymn to Jesus/love that is “Let Me In”, but also several less unfamiliar tracks.
Even Michael Jackson couldn’t express teen angst and despair as grievously as Donny did on “Puppy Love” (“Someone help me! Help me, please!”), but songs like “I Knew You Well” and “Hey Girl” (“How can I EXIST without you?”) go even deeper. Had The Osmonds’ berserk 1973 album The Plan been better represented, this would have earned itself an extra star, as that album makes The Polyphonic Spree sound like The White Stripes. Preposterous but brilliant.
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