As young singers, Donny Osmond and Michael Jackson had hit songs written for them. But in a 2022 interview on “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” Osmond revealed that the 1970 Osmond Brothers hit, “One Bad Apple,” was originally written for the Jackson Five. “That was our first number one,” Osmond told Clarkson. “In fact, Michael told me that, allegedly, it was written for the J-Five, and I said, ‘Well I got one on you, Mike.’ ‘Ben,’ his number one solo, was written for me. That was my song.”
“Ben” was from the soundtrack to the 1972 movie “Willard” and it became a solo hit for Jackson. Osmond explained that the reason he didn’t record the song was because he was on tour with his brothers while producers were on deadline to finish the movie. “The producer said, ‘There is this little kid named Michael Jackson, let’s get him to sing, he’s got a high voice’. And it became his song,” Osmond said, adding that he and Jackson would laugh about the song swap all the time.
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A decade later, when Jackson was riding high on the success of his album “Thriller,” Osmond couldn’t even get a record deal. Osmond told Page Six he went to Jackson for advice on how to get back on the charts, and Jackson told him he needed to change his name because the Osmond name was “poison.” “It was quite offensive,” Osmond said. “But he told me that in ’83, and it wasn’t until 1989, that ‘Soldier of Love’ became a hit without my name. So Michael was right.”
