A Plea That Broke Young Hearts in Two – A Song of Forbidden Love’s Sweet, Tortured Sting
In the golden haze of September 1971, Donny Osmond released Go Away Little Girl, a tender plea that soared to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks starting November 6, a shining jewel from his album To You with Love, Donny, which peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard 200. Dropped as a single on MGM Records, it sold over a million copies, earning gold status and marking Donny’s second chart-topper after Sweet and Innocent (No. 7 earlier that year). Written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, first a No. 1 hit for Steve Lawrence in ’62, and produced by Rick Hall at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, it was a teen idol’s triumph—a remake that outshone its origin. For those of us who tuned in back then, it was a velvet dagger—a song that pierced us with its innocence and longing, echoing through a world of bell-bottoms and bubblegum dreams.
The story of Go Away Little Girl is a snapshot of Donny’s dizzying rise. By ’71, the Osmond clan—Utah’s musical dynasty—had turned Donny, just 13, into a solo star, his puppy-dog charm a juggernaut after years with The Osmonds (One Bad Apple, No. 1). The song came via Mike Curb, MGM’s head, who saw gold in reviving a classic for the teen market. Recorded in Alabama’s soul-soaked studios—far from his Mormon roots—Donny laid it down with a crack session crew, Hall coaxing a vocal that trembled with youth yet carried a man’s ache. It was a quick job, they say, his voice cutting through strings and a gentle beat in a single afternoon, a testament to a kid who’d grown up on stages and knew how to sell a heartbreak he’d barely lived. It hit as Osmondmania peaked—TV specials, fan clubs, screams drowning out the sessions—a moment when he was ours, untouchable yet close.
At its core, Go Away Little Girl is a boy’s battle with temptation—a heart begging a girl to leave before love crosses a line it shouldn’t. “Go away, little girl, before I beg you to stay,” Donny sings, his voice a soft storm, torn between “I’m not supposed to be alone with you” and the pull he can’t deny. It’s about the innocence of wanting what’s wrong, the thrill of a crush too big to hold, a plea wrapped in a melody that’s both sweet and sad. For us who swooned in ’71, it’s a memory of schoolyard glances and transistor hums, of a time when love was a secret scribbled in notebooks—first flushes of feeling, forbidden by rules we didn’t make, yet sung by a boy who seemed to understand.
Oh, those early ’70s days—pigtails and platform shoes, Tiger Beat plastered on bedroom walls, and Donny Osmond on every radio, his toothy grin a beacon of our youth. Go Away Little Girl wasn’t just a hit; it was a heartbeat, spinning on a portable player as we danced in socks across shag rugs. It’s the scent of cherry lip gloss, the glow of a TV airing The Donny & Marie Show years later, the ache of a crush we’d whisper about at sleepovers. He’d ruled with Puppy Love, but this was rawer—a kid wrestling with a grown-up game, making us feel it too. It lingered in covers—The Happenings, Lawrence—but Donny’s take, with its tremble and its truth, is the one we keep. Now, as we trace the lines of years gone by, Go Away Little Girl calls us back—to the flutter of first love, the rules we bent, to a voice that still sings us through the haze of a summer long past.