A QUIET ENTREATY TO ENDURE WHEN ALL SEEMS LOST
In the hushed glow before the final curtain, The Last Day Is Coming by The Osmonds stands as a reflective pause—a gentle reckoning with change, faith and inevitability. Released in August 1975 as the B‑side to the single The Proud One, the track appears on no major studio album crediting it as a proper single. Although it did not chart independently in the way its A‑side did, this song remains an evocative moment in the band’s catalogue, one that reveals layers of their later artistic and spiritual thinking.
Though we lack a documented peak chart position for “The Last Day Is Coming” itself, its pairing with “The Proud One” anchors it in a commercial context: “The Proud One” reached No. 22 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and hit No. 1 on the U.S. Easy Listening chart. The very nature of the song—despite its secondary release status—invites us to treat it not as a mainstream hit but as a kind of hidden epilogue: the quiet voice after the applause.
In turning the needle to this track, one finds the Osmonds at an intersection of pop craftsmanship and spiritual introspection. Emerging from their earlier bubble‑pop teen idol phase, the band had by the early 1970s embarked on a more concept‑driven direction. Their 1973 album The Plan explicitly drew upon tenets of their Mormon faith, contemplating eternal themes of time, mortality and redemption. While “The Last Day Is Coming” is not listed in that album’s main track‑list (which ends with “Goin’ Home”), its lyrical title and underlying tone place it firmly within that spiritual‑end‑time orbit.
Musically, the song unfolds with a serene orchestration: the group’s signature harmony softly supported by piano, gentle percussion and subtle strings. Its structure eschews the bombast of their earlier rock leanings (as heard in songs like “Crazy Horses”) and instead embraces a contemplative stillness. The title itself—“The Last Day Is Coming”—reveals the thematic thrust: a recognition that time is finite, that something beyond the seen is drawing near.
Lyrically, though details are sparse in public archives, one can sense the Osmonds’ awareness of impermanence and the hope of transcendence. The phrase “the last day” carries both an intimate meaning (the end of love, the end of dreams) and a cosmic one (the last day of reckoning, of promise). In the context of a band known for weaving faith and pop into one cloth, the track becomes a quiet meditation on what it means to face the inevitable with grace rather than fear.
What makes this song compelling for the mature listener is its refusal to demand attention—it invites reflection. In a catalogue often defined by upbeat energy and family‑friendly exuberance, here the Osmonds offer something more subtle: an acknowledgement of endings, and by extension, of beginnings. When the harmonies settle and the final chord fades, one is left with the sense that the journey continues—though the destination might lie beyond our sight.
In the vinyl archive of life, “The Last Day Is Coming” occupies its own shelf: not a commercial triumph, but a whispering testament. It reminds us that even the sun‑bright pop of yesteryear can cast long shadows—and in those shadows, we find a deeper beauty: the beauty of knowing that what comes last may hold the greatest meaning of all.