On a late Wednesday afternoon, Donny Osmond hops on the phone for an interview. In five hours, he’ll be donning a flashy jacket onstage at Harrah’s on the Las Vegas Strip, where he’s spent the past three years taking fans on a whirlwind ride through his dynamic career five nights a week.
His voice is in recovery mode, he says, after he got caught up in the adrenaline of the crowd the other night and overdid it a little. But that still doesn’t keep him from bursting into occasional song throughout the course of our conversation, as he reflects on the remarkable longevity of his career and what his future as an entertainer holds.
It’s something he’s thought a lot about recently — especially as he’s found a way to condense the diverse chapters of his ongoing career into a fast-paced hour-and-a-half show in Las Vegas.
That’s 60 years in 90 minutes.
The day of our interview happens to be a significant date for Osmond: It marks exactly 53 years since his cover of “Go Away Little Girl” hit No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts. He was 13.