What Song Did Donny Osmond Record While Dressed Up As a Disney Villain?
Disney runs deep in Donny Osmond‘s life. Not only did the star provide the singing voice of Captain Li Shang in the animated hit Mulan; he also played the wicked Gaston in the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast from September through December 2006. Eagle-eyed fans will notice that that role would have fallen just a few months before the release of his 2007 album, Love Songs of the 70s. And according to a clip from his Las Vegas live show that was recently posted to Osmond’s Instagram account, that close scheduling of the two projects led to some hilarious crossover.
In the video, Osmond recalled getting the role of Gaston, but at the same time “I had to get the album done.” He came to an interesting work-around for this problem: his dressing room at the Broadway theater was converted into a recording studio.
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“Every time I wasn’t on stage, which is quite a bit,” Osmond recalled, “I would run to my dressing room, and record bits and pieces of this album.” Because of this, Osmond has a very particular image that runs through his head whenever he performs his cover of the 1972 Chi-Lites hit “Oh Girl”: himself, dressed for the stage as Gaston. In his mind, “I have got the muscles on, I’ve got the ponytail on…that’s the visual when I sing this,” Osmond said.
Osmond made his final appearance as Gaston on Broadway on July 29, 2007, returning for a few of the musical’s final performances before it ended its run. The role is his second most-famous stage role — his first being, of course, his ’90s run as the star of Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Where Are They Now? Music Legends
July/August 2025
They rocked and rolled us, they shredded, they head-slammed and they crooned, but what happened to them and where are they now?
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