Ouch. Say what you will about the earlier
Osmonds albums, they knew what their audience wanted. That unerring eye for the crowd had wavered somewhat lately, with both
The Plan and
Love Me for a Reason trying just a little too hard to break the teenybop lock. Compared to
The Proud One, however, they are masterpieces. In fairness, four years had now passed since
the Osmonds first emerged to send a generation of teenyboppers crazy with desire. Those kids had all grown up now...or, at least, had presumably moved beyond the kind of things they got excited about when they were 11, 12, 13 years of age. But what did they move on to? Wild rock, heavy metal, disco, all of which were flourishing at this time? Or po-faced balladeering of the kind that
the Osmonds themselves would have witnessed when they were first breaking through, courtesy of
Andy Williams and company? Because that's the direction
the Osmonds took, and the madness faded away overnight. The title track, already one of the
Gaudio-
Crewe team's lesser concoctions, proved a barely memorable hit single shortly before the album was released; the remainder of the set, however, simply drifts aimlessly around the cocktail party, slick and glib and so over-produced that it makes your teeth hurt to listen to it. The Osmonds were already falling from grace before they cut this album.
The Proud One was the sound of them hitting the bottom. ~ Dave Thompson