Donny Osmond - Love Songs of the `70s

gather.com asked me to take a listen to a preview copy of Donny's new collection, Love Songs of the `70s, (in stores April 24th) possibly because I'm the only one of the Merry Music Correspondents there old enough to have been listening to something besides The Banana Splits and Schoolhouse Rock back in the`70s. That's a base canard (also known as the bottom duck in a pyramid of ducks) against my colleagues of course, but I couldn't resist. Anyway, I chewed on it for a bit, and figured that between Donny and the `70s I could find enough to write about even if I found I didn't like the CD, so I told them to send it on. And we put it on the player one snowy afternoon and sat in front of the fireplace and listened.

And you know what? It's more than good. It works as a strong, representative collection of `70s music - the good and the bad - and it works as a showcase for Donny's voice, which after his various turns on Broadway, has become much stronger than it was back in the days of Donny & Marie.

The thing about doing covers is - that to do them right - you need to remind people both of the original while somehow making the song your own. It's not an easy thing to do. One of my favorite podcasts is Coverville, produced by Brian Ibbott, which as the name implies, is a 30-40 minute radio-like show featuring covers of songs. Some famous songs, some obscure. Some famous cover artists, some unknown indies. Some of the covers are excellent, driving me to find the song or complete album on iTunes or Amazon. Some of the covers are just too weird or so rejiggered that I can't make it through the complete track.

Based on the measurement of "making it your own while evoking the original," Donny Osmond gets his covers mostly right with Love Songs of the `70s. The CD tracks include...