After more than a decade away from pop music, Donny Osmond [ tickets ] is frank about his reason for returning to the genre. "Because they canceled our talk show," he said with a laugh.

Osmond was speaking of "Donny and Marie," the Emmy-nominated daytime TV show that he and his sister, Marie, hosted until its production company dropped it earlier this year.

During his time away from pop music, Osmond also starred in the touring version of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Now he is promoting "This Is the Moment" (Decca Broadway/Universal Classics), a collection of showtunes injected with pop flavor. Among the songs he took on were "Seasons of Love" from "Rent," "It’s Possible" from "Seussical" and "Our Kind of Love" from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical "The Beautiful Game." Vanessa Williams and Rosie O’Donnell make guest appearances.

His current tour, "This is the Moment: An Evening with Donny Osmond," kicked off in early May in Detroit and will make stops in more than 30 North American and Canadian theatres through July. After that, Osmond will visit Europe, Australia and Asia before returning to the United States in November.

Osmond talked with liveDaily correspondent Christina Fuoco about the record, working with "Lord Lloyd Webber" and "This Is the Moment" producer Phil Ramone (Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand), as well as his talk show.

LiveDaily: You promoted your record by making appearances on PBS. That seems like the best way to tell everyone about a piece like "This Is the Moment."

Donny Osmond: When they asked me to be a part of the "Great Performances" series on PBS, I thought, "Wow, what an honor ..."

I always associate PBS with--no pun intended--great performances and "important" TV.

What’s interesting is, a lot of people think it’s kind of like secondary television. ... It’s on constantly in my house, because you’re not gonna hear something or see something with your kids that’s offensive. And, like you said, there’s some great performances on there. So I’m pretty fortunate that they asked me to do this.

Most of the artists who translate Broadway tunes stick very close to the original. Yours are more modern, or updated.

When Phil Ramone and I sat down and started figuring out the tunes, he said, "We’re really gonna go pop with this in certain directions." I thought, "Boy, that’s exactly what I want to do." I worried about the whole direction of taking Broadway tunes and basically doing a glorified cast album. I wasn’t interested in that. But having Phil produce it was terrific. He’s one of the best producers you can get.

What was it like to work with Phil Ramone?

First of all, there’s a lot of pressure, because of the history of him. But after you meet him and have a good time, and before the recording process started, we were the best of buds. Then he gave me a whole different pressure, because he said he’s gonna treat this album the same way he approached the Frank Sinatra "Duet" album. I said, "How’s that?" He said Frank would come in and [Ramone] basically said to everybody that they got three chances to get it right. If anybody makes a mistake, we’re moving on. So I said, "You’re going to give me three takes for vocals?" He said, "You’re absolutely right." We approached this whole album very, very live. As a matter of fact, a lot of the performances is the first take because we did it all live.

It sounds great. You must have nailed it right on, then.

Well, there were a couple things that we had to go back and fix but not very many. There are some things that I really wish we could go back and fix, but in hindsight, I’m glad we didn’t, because it was real. It was that real performance. The years of doing musical theater really helped in that respect.

How did you go about choosing the songs for your record?

Yeah, that was the tough part. It was down in Miami, where Phil was working on another project. We got together and had a list of at least 150 songs that we wanted to do, and we narrowed a lot of that down by creating the criteria [of] current Broadway stuff. There are three songs in there that date back a little bit, but mainly we wanted current songs.

He asked me if I wanted to do something from "Joseph" and I said, "No, because it’s been done." I wanted to do something from Andrew Lloyd Webber, and I called Andrew himself up--it took guts to do this--and I said I wanted an original song that nobody else has, and I want to be the first. He indulged ... ["Our Kind of Love" is] in his new play called the "Beautiful Game" that just opened up. It was great. You never know how the composer is going to like your rendition. I sent it to him and he sent me a handwritten note back said, "I really like your version. Andrew." So I framed that and put it in my office. [laughs]

That does take a lot of guts to be able to do that.

Oh, sure, but I’ve known Andrew over the years, and I’ve done quite a bit with him. But still, it takes guts to say, "I want it first."

Being friends with some of the people that you worked with, was that hard or did it make you self-conscious?

I’m fortunate in the fact that it’s just the opposite. Since I do have the rapport and I have the history--I’ve been in the business a long, long time--that’s one of the reasons why, I think, Lord Lloyd Weber, as we call him, sent me the song. He came to several of my openings in Joseph, and I did his 50th birthday celebration in England. As a matter of fact [laughs], after that show he offered me the "Phantom [of the Opera]." He said, "Whenever you want to do it, let me know, and I’ll make it available for you in [London’s] West End." One of these days, I think I’ll take him up on the offer.

What was it like to be back in the recording studio again?

It was great. I really missed it. The last time I toured a record was, like, 11 years ago [with the singles] "Soldier of Love," and "Sacred Emotion" [from 1989’s "Donny Osmond"]. Then I got into musical theater. I did do a Christmas album in 1996. But that’s kind of a specialized thing. It was wonderful to get back in the studio and work again.

Why was it was time to get back in the studio and record again?

Because they canceled our talk show. [laughs] There’s no way in the world I’d be able to do this and that show at the same time. I guess things happen for a reason. And--how ironic is this--we canceled, and then we get the Emmy nomination. I called Marie up, I said, "Can you believe this?" In their faces.

How did you feel about the nomination. It must have been bittersweet.

It’s completely bittersweet, but it’s more sweet than bitter ...

When you’re doing a show like that, you can rally a lot of the members [of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences]--let’s be honest with each other, there’s a political system that can be worked through rallying. Sony has a lot of power to be able to help out in getting that nomination--there’s still no guarantee, [but] you can still get a nomination--and that’s how we got the nomination the first year.

We didn’t have Sony’s power--nor anybody’s power, for that matter--to get this [second] nomination. [It was] strictly a nod from the industry saying, "We liked your show." That’s why I say it’s more sweet than bitter, because everybody is saying, "You had a great show. Too bad it’s off."

Are you bringing a large band with you on tour?

This is gonna be interesting in the fact that I’m going to carry about five to six pieces--that’s all. Then I’m going to get local string and horn players. A lot of people have done that. Sinatra used to do it. Andy Williams does it. Streisand usually does that when she tours, because it’s just cost-prohibitive to travel with a big orchestra. So you get your local string players and horn players, and then you rehearse them the day before the show, and it works out great.