Michael Bublé’s seventh musical special, simply titled bublé!, airs on NBC March 20, and it’s being billed as the crooner’s most intimate and personal TV production yet. Inspired by the old-time television specials of Bublé’s idols (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bobby Darrin), it offers a rare glimpse into his childhood spent listening to the Great American Songbook with his grandfather, with archival home-movie footage included alongside his lovely performances with a 36-piece orchestra. bublé!  also opens with a brief look at his current family life, as he leaves home for the studio and tell his wife, singer-actress Luisana Lopilato, and their three young children, “I love you guys.”

The mood of bublé! is joyful, but three years ago, the singer and his family went through an unthinkably dark period when oldest child Noah, then age 3, was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer called hepatoblastoma. Contrary to a widely recirculated erroneous report in Britain’s Daily Mail, Bublé clarifies to Yahoo Entertainment that he did not decide to permanently retire from music at that time, but he did take an open-ended hiatus to focus on what mattered most: his son’s cancer battle. Thankfully, Noah recovered and is now doing well, and Bublé, who returned to music and recently released his 10th studio album, Love, is frank when asked how the entire traumatic experience made him rethink his life, career, and work/life balance.

“There was no balance,” says Bublé. “People have asked me, ‘What made you come back?’ And this is just the truth: My son was cured. It’s as simple as that. And I didn’t know what was going to happen. Obviously, it’s still scary, and it was even more scary, but I had never fallen out of love with music; I just thought, ‘How could I do this with a broken heart?’ It wasn’t like there was some kind of conscious decision. I didn’t have a choice. But when they told us he was OK — I don’t know how to understate how much the perspective of myself and my life changed in every way. When you go through something that hard and that terrible, if you can get through it, then everything seems quite easy. Now I find joy in the smallest places. Because my kids are healthy, that allows me to really be grateful about everything, the small things. Life is short, you know? And that’s it. That’s how I choose to live my life now. Everything is different.”

While Bublé jokes, “If you asked my kids their favorite songs, I don’t think it would be one of my songs; I think it would be ‘Despacito,’” he and Lopilato have imparted their love of music to them, just as Bublé’s grandfather did for him. (“I have a new house and I built a stage for them, and they’ve got a microphone and guitar. They do piano lessons and they love music. They have a natural affinity for it,” Bublé says proudly.) And surely thousands of families will draw inspiration from his family’s brave story.

Below, Bublé gets candid talking about the support he has received from his fans and the media, and why one song that he chose to perform on bublé! now means so much to him. 

Yahoo Entertainment: Is there any song in your repertoire — an original of yours, or a standard that that you cover — that has taken on new meaning for you in light of what your family has been through in recent years?
Michael Bublé: Yes. It’s not a song I do in concert, but I do it [on the bublé! TV special]: “A Song for You” [by Donny Hathaway]. I think the greatest power in music is that we’re allowed to interpret it. I talk about this a lot, and I talk about it at my shows, because I promised myself I would: When this happened to us, my wife and I were able to step aside from our work to go and take care of our family. And we were surrounded by so many families going through incredibly difficult things, and those families couldn’t afford to do that. And the only reason that I could afford to actually step away from work was because of the [fans]. There’s no way for me truly to express my deepest gratitude towards them. And I don’t know how else to say it; it’s overwhelming to me. I think it’ll be emotional for me for the rest of my life, to stand up in front of all of those strangers in the dark.

Michael Bublé performs on ‘bublé!’ (Photo: Chris Haston/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

So that song, “A Song for You,” is really for your fans now. They have truly been there for you.
Well, they’re not “fans.” I keep saying this over and over again: I don’t think “fan” is a very nice word. There’s a negative connotation. I think it’s short for “fanatical,” and those people that are sitting out there are surely not fanatical. They’re my family. They’re my equals. They’re my saviors, in many ways. Their prayers got us through nights that were impossible. And so the fact that I get to go out and show them my gratitude and my love means a lot to me.

There are a lot of people out there who have been through what your family went through. Do you have any stories of how any of them have reached out to you, or bonded with you, thanked you?
Every single day. There’s no one story. Every single day that I go to the store, every single day that I show up at a new arena, there are people that share touching stories. Honestly, I took the kids to Disney yesterday and we were on the submarine ride. And a woman was sitting next to us, and she was a grandma. She was with her daughter and her granddaughter, and she looked at me and she put her hand on my knee and she said, “I just am so happy for you. You don’t know how much I prayed for you. I prayed for you every day.” And I just looked at her and said, “I love you. You’ll never know how much that means to me — how much it meant to us.”

That’s amazing.
Well, these are just real people, you know? We all go through hard times, and I just think that sort of gave me a real faith in humanity. It’s not just about what we were going through. It was about what we could see happening in the world, you know? There’s a lot of issues. A lot of sadness. A lot of suffering. A lot of negative stuff. And I think for me, coming back to [music], I felt like there was a lot of power that a human being has, and that with my music, maybe I could bring some kind of peace to people — a sort of inspiration, or help somebody get through a tough moment, even if it’s as small as helping somebody just get away for a couple hours. I think that is important. And so I felt like that was kind of something that I could do, to do my part.

Didn’t the doctor who saved your son’s life attend one of your recent concerts? That must have been a very special moment.
Oh, I was so excited that he was there. It meant a lot to me. And it was obviously really emotional for me. It was a magical show, and what’s funny is he told me yesterday there were so many people there, and it was packed. He was going to call Uber [after the concert], but for whatever reason, Uber didn’t recognize the arena. They weren’t coming to get him. He was like, “S***, I’m gonna get frickin’ stuck here!” And he told me that all of a sudden, these people stopped and said, “Are you the doctor of Noah?” And he said, “Yeah.” And they said, “Listen, what are you doing?” He said, “I’m waiting for the Uber.” And they said, “No, no, no. The least we can do is drive you!” And they put him in the car and took him back to the hotel.

Aww, that completely illustrates what you were saying earlier about your fans being more than just fans! I can tell you’re getting emotional talking about this.

It’s tough for me, you know? It’s weird. I used to be so stoic. I had so much control. I don’t think I’d ever lost control of my emotions. And now I have no control. I have none! And it’s funny, because people say, “Well, that’s not a bad thing.” But it’s a little scary when you’ve had that control all your life and then all of a sudden, you don’t. It’s a weird, unnerving kind of thing.

How do you channel that new vulnerability into your art, into your music, your performances?
I promised myself, if I had ever got the chance to do this again, that I would just be real. That’s the truth. Over and over again, I said, “Michael, just be real. Just be yourself. And it’s not your business what people think of you. Just be kind. Just be yourself.” And it sounds weird, because sometimes it’s hard to be yourself — especially if you’re worried about what other people think of you, or what critics think, or the internet thinks, or whatever. … The Internet, you know, it’s f***ed.

You’re not very active on social media.
No, I don’t have social media. I mean, I guess I do, but [other people] run it for me. … I guess ignorance is bliss in some ways. One of those kind of epiphanies that I had the day we found out about Noah was that [social media] didn’t feel good to me. It didn’t feel right. What I wanted to do, really, was just get rid of things that were ego-driven and self-indulgent. I really did. And it got very simple for me after that.

The actual media, though — the press —has rallied around you and your family.
You know, can I be honest? Part of this f***ing faith in humanity that I have … it didn’t just come from people and the public. It came from people like you. Because I saw so much tact and control. I didn’t expect to see it. I didn’t expect that so many journalists would be so human. And that, almost as much as anything, gave me this sense of wellness. There was a line that even the worst [people on the internet] didn’t cross. … It meant a lot to us, to my wife and I. The media was so great to us.

Let’s end the interview on a lighter note. You have this special on NBC, your seventh, and you’re good friends with Blake Shelton and have appeared as an adviser on NBC’s The Voice with him. Would you ever consider being a full-time coach on The Voice?
Well, people ask me about that a lot, and they’ve asked me about doing movies and stuff. I’ve had those opportunities, but the truth is, I get to go out internationally and sing in front of 45 or 50 countries. I get to show up to their backyards and be tangible. I get to dance and sing and laugh and cry with them. And I just feel that I don’t want to give that up for being in one place for that long.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Entertainment.

The Cure, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this week with a mega-concert in London’s Hyde Park, was “alternative” before some marketing think-thank coined that term — truly alternative, in the genuine sense of the term. And yet, despite releasing many willfully anti-commercial albums, group leader Robert Smith has become one of music’s most enduring, if unlikely, rock stars, earning the undying loyalty of an ’80s generation that found salvation in his anguished elegies over the past four decades.

The Cure’s ascendance from moody post-punks to bona fide stadium rockers may seem like one of rock ‘n’ roll most strangest success stories, but in this never-seen 2005 interview with Smith, longtime bassist Simon Gallup, and current drummer Jason Cooper, Smith explains it was all part of a great masterplan — launched by 1982’s uncharacteristically synthy Eurodisco single, “Let’s Go to Bed.”

“I think after the Pornography album, we went sort of pop-weird for a while,” Smith chuckles, acknowledging that the Cure’s Seventeen Seconds/Faith/Pornography trilogy “cemented our reputation, I suppose, for being ‘dismal, doomy, and gloomy.’” But the band had already demonstrated their pop chops on their debut album, Three Imaginary Boys, which — contrary to Smith’s claim that that era featured “the worst stuff” in the Cure discography — included future classics and setlist staples like “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Jumping Someone Else’s Train,” and “Fire in Cairo.”

Says Smith: “That’s the weird misconception about the group, is that we went from being kind of dark and gloomy to being a pop group in the ‘80s. But… there was a tradition already in place for me of like wanting to have that pop side. I didn’t want to let it go, but it came to the fore again after we did Pornography, because it wasn’t really anywhere else to go with that lineup. … I thought the Cure should become something else.”

It was then that the Cure temporarily reinvented itself as the new wave duo of Smith and band co-founder Lol Tolhurst (“There was this short period when the Cure was me and this funny-looking bloke who used to dance around behind me”), and Smith set his sights on world domination.

“The only way that I could get Cure music played on the radio was to make something that was radio-friendly. So ‘Let’s Go to Bed’ was entirely designed [to do that]. It was the only time we’ve ever done it, to get us played on the radio, particularly in America. And it worked!”

And so, just as that catchy single’s “through the right doorway” line prophesied, “Suddenly the door opened a chink, and we put our big feet into it and pulled it open,” Smith confesses. “The good side of it was that we didn’t go into it thinking, ‘We’re going to be a really successful pop group!’ The B-sides were always really dark, and we used [‘Let’s Go to Bed’] to introduce people to the other side of the band. So, there was a kind of plan in place.”

The Cure dramatically reversed course again with the malevolent psychedelia of 1984’s The Top, before toying with MTV (or at least 120 Minutes) success again with 1985’s The Head on the Door and its double-album follow-up, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. Ironically, when the band released its epic eighth studio effort, 1989’s magnificently melancholy magnum opus Disintegration, Smith considered it an unofficial companion to the dark and brutal Pornography and a concerted effort to return to the more claustrophobically depressing — and presumably less commercial — sound of the Cure’s earlier material. And yet Disintegration yielded the band’s first and only U.S. top 10 single, “Lovesong,” which was later covered by Adele, 311, and American Idol winner Candice Glover. Kyle from South Park even rightfully declared Disintegration “THE BEST ALBUM EVER!” The Cure have been headlining amphitheaters and arenas ever since — even though they haven’t released a studio album since 2008’s 4:13 Dream — without ever really “selling out.”

And yet, despite the band’s many stylistic switch-ups throughout the years, the Cure is still primarily known as the godfathers of Goth. Smith balks at that label. “We were never really part of the Goth scene,” he insists. “It emerged around about the time of Pornography, possibly just before 1981, 1982. I used to go to a place called the Bat Cave in London, with bands like Specimen and Alien Sex Fiend — they started the Goth scene, and the Banshees, I suppose. But we weren’t ever part of it. We didn’t look the part. If you look back at pictures of us around that time, we never looked like Goths! It used to really bug me, like I wanted nothing to do with it, but obviously we were embraced to a degree and have been down the years by a certain part of the Goth scene. We’re sort of part of the culture. But we’re tolerated, I think, more than embraced most of the time, because we dare to do other things. It’s always a problem if you step outside of a genre — then you’re kind of like barred. You’re not allowed to be a member of that club, which has never really interested us.”

“At one point we were also the ‘godfathers of shoegazing,’ which was another sort of quick trend that went,” Gallup adds.

“When that comes back, we will reclaim our rightful place,” Smith jokes, adding more seriously: “When we’re pigeonholed to any kind of genre, we don’t really pay that much attention to it, because Cure fans do like a lot of different styles of music. I mean, predominantly they wear dark-colored clothes, but that’s kind of it. There is a part of the audience which is a very hardcore kind of Goth crowd, but we would never have been as successful as we’ve been if we’d stuck to this narrow idea of what we should be doing. So, it’s really been driven by the desire to do whatever we want. In a funny way, it’s a very selfish sort of reason as to why we’re still going.”

The “Gothic” tag has probably stuck over the years thank to Smith’s lyrics – this is a man, after all, who proclaimed “It doesn’t matter if we all die” on Pornography’s “One Hundred Years,” and has penned songs with titles “The Funeral Party,” “Torture,” and “Piggy in the Mirror,” to name but a few.

“It has been difficult, the fact that I’m still around and that I do enjoy what I do so much — it does sit uneasily at times with some of the words I write. I’m very aware of that,” Smith says. “But the fact remains that I do struggle with the futility of existence. It’s as bald a fact as that. Because I don’t have faith in anything other. And so, from time to time, that is overwhelming.

“It’s angst, basically, and it’s always qualified with teenage angst in that some way, as if magically when you get to 20, it becomes ‘What was I worried about? Life means this!’” says Smith, who was 46 years old at the time of this interview, and is now nearing 60. “But in my darker hours, I still am kind of haunted by the same things: It’s that sense of hopelessness and not ever actually achieving anything, and just kind of drifting through space and time. So, there is that weird dichotomy and paradox between the fact that I’m going out and really enjoying [performing], but I’m singing very downbeat songs. But I think people understand. People get it. I think the people who don’t get it aren’t going to get what we do.”

Smith has been the Cure’s only constant member (“There have been different bands called the Cure… four-and-a half lineups,” he says), with a dozen other musicians rotating in and out since 1978. And Smith seems to prefer it that way. “There are one or two bands who have been around as long as us who’ve kept basically the same lineup, and I find that weird — unimaginable, actually,” he admits. “I couldn’t bear it. … There can be too much shared experience. You get like older married couples who just eat in silence. That’s how I imagine [bands] who have been together for too long. So, it’s actually a much healthier thing to kind of evolve.”

“Don’t you think it shouldn’t be considered such an odd thing that we have done different types of music and not kept to one style?” muses Gallup, who’s lasted the longest in the lineup, playing from 1979 to 1982 and then permanently rejoining in 1985. “If you think about it, it’s more odd that so many bands have pigeonholed themselves to one style and won’t ever move out of that. I mean, that’s a really, really self-confining thing. I think that’s stranger.”

“In part, the lineup changes over the years have been driven by that desire to get a different dynamic and a different set of people playing a different kind of music,” Smith elaborates. “Thankfully, most of them have left the band voluntarily. No, wait. I wish I hadn’t said that! They haven’t, actually.”

Smith is clearly referring to Tolhurst — initially the Cure’s drummer, before moving to keyboards — who was fired from the during the making of Disintegration and later unsuccessfully sued Smith for royalties. “It’s funny, because we were talking about Lol earlier, and I actually really admired his playing when I was younger, listening to those records. I liked the fact it was a very minimal sort of sound,” says Cooper. “But as I’ve learned subsequently, that minimalism came from a disinterest to play the more complicated beats.”

“An inability,” Smith clarifies. “Looking back at the time, it got very frustrating when we got to the Pornography album — which in fact, me and Simon used to play a lot of the drums of Pornography. We used to stand there in front of Lol and bully him, and we’d take a drum each. It was very much a collaborative effort, just the drumming, but there was a really strong sense of frustration that grew through those albums at the time with how Lol couldn’t kind of step beyond. He would always do things in the same way. But again, looking back, it really saved us, the fact that he couldn’t be flamboyant, that he couldn’t throw in drum fills and that we actually stayed with a very minimal sound. Everyone was like, ‘That’s very clever!’ People thought it was like postmodern and everything. It was just based on the fact that Lol couldn’t play any better.”

Tolhurst and Smith eventually repaired their friendship, and Tolhurst did reunite with the Cure in 2011 when the band performed their first three minimal albums in their entirety at the “Reflections” concerts in Sydney, London, New York, and Los Angeles. But he won’t be there for this week’s Hyde Park celebration, nor will other past Cure members.

“There’s not really a great desire for us to do that ‘Let’s all get back together and hold hands and join in a rendition of “A Forest,”’ however marvelous it would be,” Smiths quips. “I did toy with the idea. … I thought it might be quite sweet to get everyone together. And then I started to think about the reality of it and what it would actually look and sound like onstage, and I started to sweat. So, I thought, ‘No, it’s best just left to everyone’s imagination.’ We could do some kind of puppet show or a really bad cartoon of it to commemorate it, but in real life, I don’t think it would work.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Entertainment.

Crazy Horses, by the Osmonds (Photo: MGM Records)

Forty-five years ago, metal hell froze over, and the seemingly unfathomable happened. On Oct. 14, 1972, one of the most unlikely hard rock albums was released to an unsuspecting, Tiger Beat-reading public. That album was Crazy Horses, by the Osmonds.

Yes, those Osmonds.

While the sweet-faced, scrubbed-clean brothers had been known previously as Utah’s Mormon answer to the Jackson 5, with their own kiddie cartoon show and bubblegum pop singles like “One Bad Apple” and “Puppy Love,” in January 1972 they released Phase III, which showcased a grittier new direction and more self-penned material. Phase III went gold and yielded two top 10 singles, but it was nine months later, with the psychedelic, bananas boogie-rock of Crazy Horses, that the boys truly entered a new musical phase — and, at least temporarily, shed their teen idol image.

“My brothers and I had been what’s now called a boy band: All our songs were chosen for us by the record company,” Merrill Osmond told the Guardian in early 2017. “But now, having been successful, we wanted to freak out and make our own music. We were rehearsing in a basement one day when Wayne started playing this heavy rock riff. I came up with a melody and Alan got the chords. Within an hour, we had the song ["Crazy Horses"]. … This track was heavier than anything we’d ever done. When the label heard it, they said: ‘Guys, what on earth are you doing?’ But when the record started flying up the [British] charts, we got their respect, even though it was initially banned in France because they thought ‘smoking up the sky’ was about drugs.”

Co-produced by Michael Lloyd of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and evoking Led Zeppelin, Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles, Tower of Power, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Crazy Horses earned the Osmonds respect from other musicians as well — even from their ultimate rock idols, Zep. “When we were on tour in Europe, Led Zeppelin invited us onstage [at Earls Court, to sing "Stairway to Heaven"],” Merrill revealed to Death and Taxes magazine in 2014. “Later we hung out backstage and talked about how we really dug their entire music concept.” Added Jimmy Osmond: “It is really cool for us to know that people from top groups like Led Zeppelin have raised their hands and said, ‘Isn’t that a great riff?’ or ‘They really did have amazing musical talent.’”

Zeppelin drummer John Bonham even brought his son Jason to an Osmonds concert and took him backstage afterward to meet the band. The night made an impression on the younger Bonham, who told Death and Taxes: “They started with ‘Crazy Horses.’ They were on these wires and they came out across the audience back then, so Bon Jovi wasn’t the first guy to do it.”

“Because we were this family, we were Christians, we just didn’t fit in the mould. … the rock press would never give us a break,” Jimmy griped to Bang Showbiz in 2015. However, many years later, in 1991, noted metal critic Chuck Eddy controversially but unapologetically ranked Crazy Horses at No. 66 (or “No. 66.6”) in his anthology Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, smack in between Billy Squier and the Pink Fairies. Among other colorful and unironic pro-Osmond rants, Eddy wrote: “Marie’s and Little Jim’s big bros open with a cannibalistic ‘Immigrant Song’ rip called ‘Hold Her Tight’ and keep up to date with rebellious teen trends by dressing up like drug-crazed Electric Company rejects.”

But it was the thundering, feverishly paced, dystopian, and completely bonkers title track that turned Crazy Horses into a cult classic. (“The most apocalyptic Book of Revelation imagery this side of Dylan/Osbourne, and I swear to Joseph Smith its demented kicks and whinnies were stolen outright by Aerosmith in ‘Back in the Saddle,’” Eddy gushed.) “Crazy Horses” has been sampled by Pop Will Eat Itself and covered by KMFDM, Electric Six, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, the Mission U.K., and even Metallica … and it’s one of Ozzy Osbourne’s favorite rock songs of all time.

While Crazy Horses focused less on the Osmonds’ main heartthrob and vocalist, Donny, due to his midpuberty voice change, and most of the tracks were written by eldest brothers Alan, Merrill, and Wayne Osmond, Donny is proud of the record — he only wishes it had opened more doors for its follow-up, 1973’s The Plan, an ambitious concept album about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (The Plan stalled at No. 58 on the Billboard album chart, compared to respective peaks of No. 10 and No. 14 for Phase III and Crazy Horses.)

Donny Osmond recently spoke to Yahoo Music about Crazy Horses’ legacy and the Osmonds’ semi-secret hard rock past. It turns out he wasn’t lying when he said he was a little bit rock ’n’ roll. 

Yahoo Music: Crazy Horses comes up as a surprising influence among many credible rock artists. How did it become this underground phenomenon?

Donny Osmond: Well, I think it’s kind of interesting how the Osmond name has been really seen on both side of the pendulum. There’s obviously the bubblegum side, but for people who really know about music, it’s clear on the other side. As a matter of fact, I find it quite ironic that Metallica used to cover “Crazy Horses.” It was a cutting-edge album.

How was it received at the time?

Over in the European markets, particularly in the U.K., it was huge. … Over in the U.K., “Crazy Horses” is still revered as one of the great rock ’n’ roll songs in pop culture. It’s been covered by so many bands and used in commercials. Over in England, I’ve got such a different image — I’m more of a musician. It’s a whole different thing over there. But here in the States, once people locked their jaws into something, whether it be the “Puppy Love” era or the cartoon or whatever, then those people figure a band doing cartoons can’t do rock ’n’ roll music. The Jackson 5, now, were a different dynamic, because they weren’t considered rock ’n’ roll — that was R&B. But for white guys doing cartoons, people thought, “They can’t be doing songs like ‘Crazy Horses’!”

British fans attend an Osmonds concert in England, November 1972. (Photo: AP/Robert Dear)

Are you aware of this Chuck Eddy book that praises the album?

No, I don’t know it.

Well, the book is called Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, and Crazy Horses is No. 66.

Are you kidding me???

Seriously! No. 66 out of 500. Of course, Chuck got a lot of flak for that, because there were many metal purists who couldn’t understand how an Osmonds record could possibly be on that list.

I think that’s so cool that he would be willing to do that.

He had a strong argument for why it should be included, saying one of the most metal or punk-rock things a group like the Osmonds could do would be to make a record like Crazy Horses.

Wow. That is cool.

Do you have any stories of other rock fans or musicians expressing their love for the album or song?

Ozzy Osbourne came up to me during the [Dancing With the Stars Season 9] finals. Kelly Osbourne was in the finals with me — she came in third, and then Mya came in second, and I won. During a commercial break he had to go to the bathroom, and I’m backstage, and I’m on pins and needles because it’s the finals. And Ozzy comes right up to me and says, “I just want you to know that ‘Crazy Horses’ is one of my favorite rock ’n’ roll songs of all time.”

Donny and Marie Osmond with Ozzy Osbourne in a 2010 Super Bowl Pepsi commercial. (Photo: Pepsi Co./Getty Images)

Whoa! Anyone else?

Simon Le Bon [of Duran Duran] once said to me, “I think it would be cool if you would come up onstage and tour with us, and we would do ‘Crazy Horses’ and just blow people away, because I love that song.”

Well, I think you should remake the Crazy Horses album, with guest appearances by all the rock musicians who say they’ve been inspired by it, like Ozzy, Duran Duran, Metallica, KMFDM…

Wouldn’t that be cool? If they’d be willing to be a part of it!

Get on that! That album really does need to be more in the public consciousness.

Well, I’m glad to hear you say that, because we’re certainly proud of it. It was really frustrating for us as a band, because of the image vs. the reality.

The Osmonds pose at Schiphol, Netherlands, in 1972: left to right, Alan, Donny, Jay, Merrill, Wayne (Photo: Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns)

Do you regret that the Osmonds didn’t go in a rock direction from the very beginning?

Well, see, that was the direction we were all headed in, but then the teenybopper career was just so powerful with “Puppy Love” and all those other songs. And unfortunately, it was just a machine. My producer at the time, he said, “Let’s just pump out as much as we possibly can,” and didn’t look at a lot of quality. I recorded songs like “Lollipops, Lace, and Lipstick” and all that stuff. It was selling; that’s what the little teeny- and weenyboppers wanted. But I was into Tower of Power, and Earth, Wind & Fire, and all those kinds of bands. So it was really a juxtaposition: I was the kid who sang “Puppy Love,” so it was part of me, but I was all across the board musically growing up.

Perhaps Crazy Horses needed to be released with no name on it at first, so it could get more cred in the States.

Yeah! That should have been our White Album! As a matter of fact, we did an album called The Plan where we did that very thing. There was some hard rock radio station in L.A., and we white-labeled the album and my brother Alan took it in. The program director was like, “This is fantastic! It sounds like the Who, Led Zeppelin. What’s the name of the band?” Alan said, “Well … it’s the Osmonds.” And the guy was like, “Oh, man. I can’t play this.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

(Simon Fuller Jennifer Lopez on the Idol set. Photo: Getty Images)

American Idol, incredibly, ends next week. Or does it? Maybe not, according to the show’s creator, Simon Fuller — who envisions a multi-platform Idol reboot in the hopefully not-too-distant future.

“Who knows?” says Fuller, speaking exclusively to Yahoo Music’s Reality Rocks at a press dinner to celebrate the show’s historical 15-season run. “Here we are in 2016. There’s plenty of opportunities to be very interactive. The sort of burgeoning reach of social media, and what social media has become, is perfectly suited to what American Idol could be going forward — and might have been, if social media had been around in the past. Each fan of American Idol back in the day, if they’d had their little social network, Snapchat in particular… it’s all very compatible and in tune with American Idol. So I’m thinking far more interactive, far more connected, far broader.”

So, he really doesn’t think this is actually the end of Idol?

“No, not at all. Certainly it’s not the end of my creative journey around this idea, this show, and all that it encompasses: music, finding talent, the competitive spirit of people with a dream,” assures Fuller. “There’s a lot there. I created Pop Idol in 1999. It was a different world. And I think now, to be able to refine it and elevate it for the digital world, which is so interactive, we could do different things. It was hard to make substantial changes when we were the biggest show in America, because everyone was so scared of change, so we weren’t able to make the changes that I was thinking about and wanted to make. There was too much risk involved. In a way now, I can relax and really think about it on a different level.”

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As for how Fuller feels about American Idol ending – for now, at least — after such a long run, he says: “I guess I sort of have broad, mixed emotions. On the one hand, after doing 15 seasons, it’s sad to see it come to an end. But on the other hand, I probably wouldn’t have imagined it to be on the air for 15 seasons. I think it gives me an opportunity to reflect and take in all that has happened – and think maybe, just maybe, on how to reboot it, to come up with something for the new generation.”

Fuller actually hopes Idol will be most known for being an innovative program. “For me, as the creator, I’m the most proud of the fundamental elements of that show. I want it to be remembered for a next-generation TV show. At the front end of the millennium, we helped define what reality television is. We embraced technology in its earliest days with interactivity; AmericanIdol.com was one of the early [television show] websites. This show was a multimedia, multi-platform idea.

“I want it to be known for embracing so many fundamental elements of entertainment: live, competitive, interactive, that ‘sporting’ notion, the reality of getting to know real regular people who have dreams, the soap opera of the judges and contestants, the celebration of music. And also that a television show could be a real, physical event. I just want it to be remembered for being innovative, pioneering – and maybe the most successful TV show of all time. It would just be nice for people to recognize that. Now that we are no longer competing with other networks who resented its success, now is maybe the time to just recognize the success and be benevolent. I just want it to be a show where people think, ‘That was a part of my life. I sat with my grandparents and watched it. Fifteen years of my life was American Idol.’”

And speaking of resentment, what did Fuller think of the various musical artists – Sting, Don Henley, and Eric Church come to mind – who bashed shows like American Idol, claiming TV talent competitions were ruining the record business? He shrugs good-naturedly.

“I think in the early days that was quite common, because [Idol] was threatening. It was basically taking an entertainment platform – television — and having that dominate and lead the whole music industry: television as the savior of music. And it was mainstream. Some artists don’t like to necessarily think of themselves as being mainstream, or having to appeal to the masses or conform in order to break music. And I’ve never had a problem with that attitude; I understood that.

“I think the music industry was struggling to find its identity, struggling to deal with bad record sales, and then I come along with this show which is celebrating the dreams of the masses — and saying, ‘Actually, anyone can do this.’ That’s kind of threatening to some artists. But it was not meant be threatening. It was just meant to capture that emotion that anything is possible.

“But I think over the years as we became so successful, and we created legitimate stars, I think those [detractors] probably have a different view now. I think in the case of Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson, in particular those two — who are without a doubt renowned as legitimate stars — they would both tell you that without American Idol, they would have never become famous. They would have never sold millions of albums. While Idol may be remembered for being a television show, for me, the music was always the heart and soul of it. In concert, we sold out hundreds and hundreds of arenas. To have a television show that can also sell out arenas and generate over a hundred #1 singles for superstar artists, who have won awards in every genre of entertainment, I’m glad it’s known for that. So our defense is in our history.

“But maybe if Sting were here, he would not feel the same!”

And now, it’s time for a little Idol-history lightning round…

YAHOO MUSIC: What’s your all-time favorite Idol performance?

SIMON FULLER: “Oh, that’s really hard to say. There’s so many, but ‘Natural Woman’ by Kelly Clarkson springs to mind. And ‘Mad World’ by Adam Lambert.”

Do you have a favorite Idol season?

“Probably the Carrie Underwood season [Season 4]. It was so exciting. The show was really at its peak then.”

Is there any one contestant you were shocked didn’t win or didn’t go farther?

“Oh, I always said, ‘It is what it is.’ I mean, you could have said Chris Daughtry was a shock, but then he did so well afterwards. Maybe that was the biggest shock… Or maybe for me, Angie Miller [who placed third in Season 12]. That one really shocked me. I really thought she was going to win. She probably should have won.”

Favorite coronation song?

“[Phillip Phillips’s] ‘Home,’ for sure. We knew we had something special with that song. Second would be [David Cook’s] ‘Time of My Life.’ That one came from a songwriting contest, which I thought was great. I would have liked to do more of that sort of thing.”

Favorite mentor?

“I always liked Harry Connick Jr. as a mentor, and that’s really what led to him being a judge on the show. He was such a great mentor — so funny and witty and charming and charismatic.”

Favorite judge?

“I don’t mean to offend anybody, but for me personally, Jennifer Lopez. She was a true fan of the show, long before I asked her to come on. She just brought a warmth and charisma and glamour to the show that it needed. And I see her as a transition from when Simon Cowell left – she kept it going, and led the way for the next years. I love Jennifer. And obviously you can’t ignore the fact that Simon [Cowell] was the first. It was really built around him.”

OK. So American Idol is coming back next year. Right? Right?

“Ha. Sure. We’ll see…”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.