Donny Osmond has spent decades in the spotlight — first as a teen idol, later as a seasoned entertainer. But in a new revelation, the 67-year-old star says one of the toughest pieces of advice he ever received came from none other than Michael Jackson.
Osmond recently resurfaced a clip from his 2023 interview on The Adam Carolla Show, recalling how in the early 1980s, when his once-white-hot career had cooled, he turned to Jackson for guidance.
“I asked, ‘Mike, how do I get back on the charts?’” Osmond remembered. The King of Pop’s response shocked him. “‘Your name’s poison, Donny. You gotta change your name.’”
The words stung. “It was very offensive,” Osmond admitted. “It was tough to hear that.”
But as he later reflected, Jackson wasn’t wrong.
By 1989, Osmond was trying to reinvent himself musically, releasing the single Soldier of Love. Radio stations were hesitant to play a Donny Osmond record outright — his wholesome teen idol image from the 1970s was seen as outdated.
“In fact, WPLJ in New York got a hold of ‘Soldier of Love’ as an import,” Osmond explained. “They played the record to test it because they liked the song, but they just didn’t want to say my name.”
For a time, his comeback hit circulated anonymously, with DJs spinning the track but refusing to attach his name to it. Ironically, the mystery helped the song take off.
“And they did me a favor by not saying who I was, and it became a hit,” Osmond said. “Then they found out it was me.”
The rebirth of his career proved Jackson’s blunt assessment was, in some ways, accurate.
Both men knew what it was like to grow up in the glare of the public eye. Osmond, one of nine children, rose to fame as part of The Osmonds alongside his brothers, later launching a solo career and a popular musical partnership with his sister, Marie. Jackson’s own trajectory began with the Jackson 5 before he exploded worldwide as a solo artist with the release of Thriller in 1982.
Their paths overlapped often, and Osmond says their bond ran deeper than show business.
“If you look at The Osmonds and the Jackson 5, the comparisons of the two families are just uncanny,” Osmond noted in the 2023 documentary Larger Than Life: Reign of the Boybands. “There are nine children in each family. Mike and I are both the seventh child of nine. Our mothers’ birthdays are on the same day. Michael and I are the same age.”
Beyond their shared fame and uncanny family parallels, Osmond says he and Jackson related on a personal level.
“We would get together and just laugh and reminisce about the comparisons and the similarities,” Osmond recalled. “Michael said something to me one day, and he said, ‘Donny, you’re the only person on this planet that knows what my childhood is like.’”
Though Jackson’s comment about his name “being poison” hurt, Osmond has since framed it as a tough truth from one pop superstar to another.
Jackson, who died in 2009 at age 50, continues to cast a long shadow over the music world. Osmond, meanwhile, has enjoyed one of the longest careers in entertainment, performing in Las Vegas residencies, starring on Broadway, releasing albums, and even winning Dancing With the Stars in 2009.
But behind the polished performances and public smiles lies the memory of that one piece of blunt, even brutal, advice — advice that may have helped shape one of the most unlikely comebacks in pop history.
