Various: Somewhere in Time (US Version)

by William Ruhlmann Now in the third phase of his recording career, following an early-'70s stint as a teen idol and a late-'80s period as a dance-pop star, Donny Osmond returned to recording in 2001 with This Is the Moment, on which he performed contemporary show tunes in contemporary pop arrangements. It was the kind of album concept a pre-rock pop singer might have undertaken (and which many did in the '50s and '60s), and the follow-up is another one of those concepts: an album of covers of pop songs done in contemporary arrangements and in Osmond's familiar vocal style. The difference, of course, is that while Frank Sinatra, say, in the '50s might do an album of old Tin Pan Alley standards from the '30s, they were songs not so closely associated with a particular singer or a particular recording, and thus were easier to claim for his own. Osmond, on the other hand, must contend with the original hit recordings of 10cc's "I'm Not in Love," Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over," and the Turtles' "Happy Together," to name only three. And when it comes to "Without You" and "Puppy Love," there are two hit recordings to consider (in the latter case, of course, one of them his own). He doesn't really improve on any of the originals, but he does do a respectable job, and in so doing he does these songs a favor by demonstrating that they can have legitimate lives as songs beyond the familiar recordings of them; they really are standards. He has chosen material that works well with his elastic tenor, and he has thought about the lyrics, lending greater coherency to them than they had originally. [The album closes with an up-tempo hidden track, "Crazy Horses," that harks back to Osmond's dance-pop days.]