Results: Donny Begat Michael?: A Tale of Jacksons and Osmonds

Psychedelic rock and appreciating it as an artform were big deals in 1969, but so was bubblegum music. The unabashedly commercial strain of rock & roll was aimed at tweens and younger kids, though it often with coded lyrical innuendo to appeal to older listeners who could understood double entendres. Enter sibling quintet The Jackson 5, plying bubblegum soul music free of libidinous double-speak; that's likely because one of their lead singers was actual tween Michael Jackson. If you're already familiar with them, were you aware of these circumstances that brought The Jackson Five to widespread popularity?

Nothing breeds imitation like success, and The Jackson 5 were immediately successful among pop and soul listeners with their first nationally-issued single (see first question) and for a few years after. Though the Osmonds had been featured on Andy Williams' TV variety show and became well-known in Sweden and Japan (?!), they began their US hit streak in late 1970 with what can be heard as a Jackson 5 imitation , "One Bad Apple." As with their stylistic predecessors, The Osmonds were five brothers with the youngest among them, Donny, a lead singer. Can you hear how The Osmonds' first biggie resembles The Jackson 5?

Though The Jackson 5 set a template for The Osmonds to become teen magazine pin-up hitmakers, the latter were first to expand their domination by launching a solo act. By spring of 1971, Donny Osmond hit the US pop top ten with "Sweet and Innocent." According to the notes in a CD set of Motown Records singles released in '71, Michael Jackson was introduced as a solo singer in fall of that year with "Got To Be There" in response to Donny Osmond's solo stardom. Were you aware of this this turn in pop music history?

Here's supposing that it doesn't bear repeating that Jackson's star rose higher Osmond's, making the former possibly the most famous male pop or r&b singer who has ever been or may ever be. But Osmond didn't fare badly after his solo hit streak subsided in the mid-'70s. He kept plenty busy on TV and in recordings with pop/country-singing kid sister Marie and in touring stage plays...until his late '80's comeback to radio prominence with "Soldier of Love." Listening to the song and watching its video now, I'm struck by how much he seems indebted to what George Michael was about musically and visually at the time. Not just my observation, is that?

As of this writing, Donny Osmond is among the living, while Michael Jackson died over a decade ago, and the the infamy surrounding the latter's dark side has only grown in the intervening years. Without giving imprimatur to either man's theology, it seems to me that Osmond has handled his fame more sanely, though his never sustained the frenzied peaks of Jackson's. As one generally impolitic singer of funny songs has put it, Jackson "was born black, he died white, and in the middle he fiddled with kids," though it could be conjectured that much of his dysfunction stemmed from the deprivation of a regular childhood in exchange for obtaining his notoriety. If Donny Osmond was put through similarly grueling paces, nothing has come out about it yet to my knowledge. Can you draw any lesson/s from comparing Donny and Michael?