Got to agree, as an 8 yr old at the time, that the whole “they” thing made sense. It’s all very non-sexual, so the success of the record (not the song – I guess Anka was cynical even at 16) is entirely based on generational misunderstanding. The early 70s was the first time anyone had made records that gave any credit to the idea that pre-teens might fancy each other. Salt Lake City Donny aged 15 most likely equated to pre-teen UK boys and girls more than yr average 15 yr-old in 1972; hence, this hitting bigger here than the teen-oriented Go Away Little Girl.

I remember hearing this for the first time on Tony Blackburn’s breakfast show along with Love Unlimited’s Walking In The Rain, both mid-tempo and keening. Of course, I listen to one more than the other these days.

And all Donny hits here-on in were dismissed by me and my 8+ mates as “weedy”, not at all to be confused with Love Unlimited. We learned fast. And I’ll stand by that judgment.

“Can anyone here add to the confusion?”

The Orchestra swirls, the tune starts, and I thought “Ah ok, girl backing vocals…. When’s the lad starting to sing then?”

“Let Me In” is the real concealed Osmonds classic, if it had been on SMiLE cont p 994b

(in fact even ppl whpo are lying to themselves like it! but they’re lying to themselves!)

Well, yes, you would, because you’re one of the ‘they’! Though he is young – and sounds younger – it’s TRU LUV.
Though I’ll guess you’ll… never know.

Anyway. Yes, this song is unbearable. And the arrangement of the lettering on the poster irritates me strangely.

I was way too young to know about him at the time, but he must have been the grandmas’ favorite too, so utterly wholesome…

aw, look at donny’s cheeky little face

It’s a pretty enough song but the interpretation makes me want to reach for the sick bag.

NME described 1972 as the year of the pretties, with Osmond, Cassidy and Michael Jackson breaking out from their real or fictional family acts to bigger solo status. One question – how come the UK didn’t get the same thing happening with Bobby Sherman, who was huge in the US but had just one minor hit here?

*actually quite a bit later than this
**i shd do a post on the poptimist resistance underground at my school, there was a MILITANT ABBA FAN w.no friends who enjoyed being hated for this (and admittedly other less shallow) reasons — he was also having an affair with a 35-year-old woman, tho i’m not sure what the relevance is

But I don’t get this comment of Tom’s: “the problem is that Osmond sounds too young”. Isn’t that exactly the point of the song, hammered home in Donny’s follow-up cover of “Too Young”? ‘They’ say we are not old enough to know what love is. (There’s that shadowy ‘they’ again from “Vincent”.) But what do ‘they’ know, says Donny, about what a young heart really feels. And you try telling those tweenie girls with their bedroom posters of Osmond that they’re too young to really be in love.