This is an article I’ve been wanting to write for several years. I finally got the motivation I needed to do it earlier this week when I stumbled upon a 2019 article in Vulture by Carrie Wittmer with a title very similar to the one you are reading right now. I want to congratulate Ms. Wittmer on being the wrongest that anyone has ever been in the history of the Internet. (I just clicked through her social media profiles and freelance website, and she seems to be a very charming and happy person. I wish her the best despite her dubious HSM opinions.)
Anyway, I’m repeatedly on the record in both written and podcast form that I think Disney Channel musicals are lots of fun, and that Hollywood’s big studios could learn a lot from them. For example: they could make musicals that are lots of fun.
The apex of the DCOM musical mountain is the High School Musical trilogy (though the third is technically not a Channel Original, as it received a wide theatrical release and a big budget). Directed by Kenny Ortega and starring Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, these are millennial touchstones, and their appeal has endured my generation enters our 30s and 40s thanks primarily to the remarkable musical numbers. Colorful, catchy, and kinetic, the songs in High School Musical 1-3 are worthy of celebration, which I will now commence.
In my ranking, reprises are grouped with their original iterations and bonus tracks are out. (Sorry, “Humuhumunukunukuapua’a”). The ranking is broken into three tiers. I am evaluating the songs as both musical recordings and pieces of film production here. In other words — visuals matter, because these are movies, of course.
Tier 3: Just Fine
27. “Walk Away” (HSM3)
There are no bad songs in the High School Musical trilogy. We can start there: no bad placements on this list. That said, there are some boring songs and some bland songs, and I count “Walk Away” on that list.
Ortega and co. repeated a few song types across all three movies. My least favorite of the bunch is the Gabriella-dumping-Troy ballad, because real relationship drama is simply not what the series is made for.
The production for “Walk Away” ain’t much — alternating shots of Hudgens and Efron looking sadly at little totems of loneliness like wilting flowers and empty lockers.
26. “Right Here, Right Now” (HSM3)
In addition to finding the ballads not quite as exciting as the upbeat numbers and the scorchers, there’s another pattern I must point out: High School Musical 3 has by far the weakest set of numbers of the three films. The productions are frequently astronomically exciting, but the tunes themselves aggregate around “meh.”
I respect Ortega’s instinct to stage this little number with minimal ornamentation in order to maximize intimacy between Troy and Gabriella. But it just means the song falls back towards boring and bland, as noted above.
25. “Just Wanna Be With You” (HSM3)
Though it’s possibly the catchiest tune on the HSM3 soundtrack, I still rank it lower than other tracks because the song simply has no clear mission. It starts as a moment to honor Lucas Grabeel’s Ryan and Olesya Rulin’s Kelsi as behind-the-scenes musical architects, but morphs into a portrait of the group rehearsing. The reprise on opening night is goofy fun. Charming but inessential.
24. “Can I Have This Dance” (HSM3)
The only one of High School Musical 3’s ballads that really clicks for me is the one that shows Botlon’s Troy and Hudgens’ Gabriella waltzing on the roof in the rain. It’s a bland song and simple production, but great chemistry moment.
23. “When There Was Me and You” (HSM1)
Hudgens was 17 when she filmed High School Musical. It’s a lot to ask a child to carry a musical’s breakup ballad. Slow and emotive is always a tougher sell than fast and fun. So even though this is the most skippable song in the first film, I respect that Hudgens keeps it afloat.
22. “Everyday” (HSM2)
High School Musical 2 has through-the-roof musical energy and saturated production. But its plot is pretty grumpy and mean-spirited, and I’m checked out on the non-singing bits when I’m watching Part 2 these days. I think that’s why “Everyday” lands with a bit of a thud for me: It should be the emotional payoff, but my investment is always pretty low.
Still, I love the coordinated white outfits and especially the surreal cloudy-sky canvas background fluttering in the wind like this is the end of The Truman Show.
21. “Start of Something New” (HSM1)
This is a tough one to rate. It’s purposefully a little appetizer of what’s to come, a suggestion of sparks between two reluctant kids. And it works for that. But it lacks the punch of nearly every other song that follows it.
If you were ranking it on iconic value, it would obviously place much higher than 21st, but for what I actually want to watch and listen to at any given moment these days, this feels right. Some of those vocal affectations meant to indicate intuitive musical talent are annoying, man.
Good God, the goo-goo eyes these two give each other, though. You can’t manufacture chemistry like that. Casting agents pull their hair out looking for this.
Tier 2: Genuinely Great
20. “Gotta Go My Own Way” (HSM2)
Pretty much any song gets better when you shoot it in this color scheme, even a breakup ballad. But regardless the hues, I dig this track — it’s like a Mandy Moore midtempo single circa 2004 (complimentary).
What really puts “Gotta Go My Own Way” over the top is when Troy and Gabriella have a climactic confrontation on a bridge. All movies should have a sung argument that takes place on a bridge.
19. “High School Musical” (HSM3)
Absolutely insanely brilliant to end the trilogy with the protagonists stepping out of their graduation ceremony through a stage proscenium with a falling curtain, revealing that everything we’ve been watching for three films has been a… high school musical! The track “High School Musical” from High School Musical, indeed. Part 3 gets meta and weird, man.
The track is just fine, but it’s elevated by a fun production making great use of the high-contrast red and white graduation robes fluttering and filling the frame.
18. “Scream” (HSM3)
Another song type shared across all three soundtracks is the scorcher in which Troy has a sports-themed mental breakdown. “Scream” takes it to an extreme level. It’s not much of a song in a vacuum, but as a production it is absolutely wild: flickering lights, hundreds of basketballs raining from the sky, and, most importantly, the Inception rotating hallway two years before Chris Nolan did it. I hope Kenny Ortega gets a royalty check with every Inception Blu-ray sale.
17. “Bop to the Top” (HSM1)
I have spent many hours of my adult life pondering and debating whether Mrs. Darbus made the correct decision in casting Troy and Gabriella as the leads ahead of Ryan and Sharpay. I had long been #TeamSharpayAndRyan, but, more recently, I’ve seen Darbus’s reasoning. It’s not for anything in the auditions themselves, but two extrinsic reasons: 1) Troy and Gabriella have ridiculous romantic chemistry as compared to, uh, brother and sister Ryan and Sharpay, which might be awkward for a love story. 2) People actually showed up when Troy and Gabriella auditioned. So they’ll probably buy tickets to the actual performances and bring their friends. Thus, Darbus made a commercial decision as much as it is an artistic one, much like the tough choices Hollywood makes during their productions.
Anyways, yeah, Grabeel and Ashley Tisdale know how to catch your eye on a stage, and thus Sharpay and Ryan’s goofy faux-Latin number is a hoot.
16. “You Are the Music in Me” (HSM2)
One gimmick I love every time the series uses it is when we get two competing versions of the same song in very different styles. “You Are the Music in Me” would have placed several spots lower on this list if it was just the flirty but forgettable Troy-Gabriella duet.
But when Sharpay pulls it out and turns it into a Motown girl group number? Chef’s kiss.
15. “The Boys Are Back” (HSM3)
Browse social media references and Letterboxd reviews of High School Musical 3, and you’ll quickly learn that “The Boys Are Back” left an outsized impression among audiences. It is not at all hard to see why: This is a valid candidate for the most fun staging of any of the songs in the trilogy.
It serves no narrative or emotional purpose, but is it fun to watch Efron and Corbin Bleu dance through an automaton-filled junkyard? Yes. Yes it is.
14. “Work This Out” (HSM2)
This is the moment in the story when High School Musical 2’s characters start getting real whiny, but I still love “Work This Out.” The song builds to an outrageously delightful segment in which the dancers start using various kitchen appliances as instruments. It serves both the choreography, with lots of goofy prop antics, and the music, which layers wacky percussion foley into a fun rhythm.
“Work This Out” was memorably the subject of a video speculating what the song would sound like in real life.
13. “Now or Never” (HSM3)
The budget of High School Musical 2 was $7 million, and it might be the furthest any director has stretched a budget in the 21st century. (Yes, I’ve seen The Brutalist, made for $10 million, and my statement stands.) But Disney bumped the budget for High School Musical 3, a theatrical release, to a whopping $30 million. And Ortega leaves every damn dollar on screen. This movie absolutely rips.
You notice it right away with the breathless opener “Now or Never,” which is not quite as joyful as the analogous tune in High School Musical 2, but musters all of Ortega’s cinematic technique: flying camera, flashing bulbs, dynamic lighting, rhythmic editing perfectly synced to the tune, brilliant color design (I mean… check out that red-white contrast during the crowd long shots!), etc. Real-ass movie stuff. It helps that the song itself is a catchy, upbeat knockoff of that busy Timbaland sound that was hot circa 2008.
12. “A Night to Remember” (HSM3)
The big prom showstopper is a wild bit of diegesis-warping: the opening is obviously non-diegetic as Troy and Chad break into song, and closing is obviously diegetic during a rehearsal, and the rest of the song mines the ambiguity of that transition between. It’s an incredible, theatrical effect. As a piece of musical filmmaking this is phenomenal — it’s one of the best bits of choreography in the whole series, with remarkable costumes (please purchase Chad’s jersey suit for me) and some real fun group dancing in the song’s climax.
11. “Get’cha Head in the Game” (HSM1)
If I may bring a basketball comparison to a basketball-themed song… There has been some discourse in NBA circles on the question “is Steph Curry a top 10 player of all time?” Some fans respond “of course he’s top 10, he’s Steph freakin Curry.” Others point out that Curry is all time great, but there are at least 10 players whose career surpass his, so he is definitionally not top 10.
That’s how I feel about “Get’cha Head in the Game” — of course it’s a top 10 High School Musical song, but here we are at #11. The catalog just runs that deep.
“Get’cha Head in the Game” is the first moment in the series when we enter the head of a specific character via song, and I wish I could go back and experience it for the first time again. Even knowing it’s coming, it’s surreal. But the slightly dim cinematography, psychological intensity, and ingenious blending of basketball practice into the choreography and soundscape make for a unique treat.
10. “What I’ve Been Looking For” (HSM1)
This is the first and best use of competing renditions of the same song to showcase different character traits and psychologies, and it gets to the heart of the Troy and Gabriella vs. Ryan and Sharpay casting dilemma. (In spite of it all, I still tilt the latter.) There’s tremendous, playful tension between the two takes on “What I’ve Been Looking For.” It would have been easy to make the villains’ version sound ugly or mean, but everyone is having so much fun. (Though check HSMTMTS for an “angry” take.)
The tune is an bop in either format, and this is one of the only times I really feel the romance and intimacy carried in the actual vocals between Troy and Gabriella. (Ironic, then, that Drew Seeley provided the actual soundtrack vocals rather than Efron.)
9. “Stick to the Status Quo” (HSM1)
The lyrics are on the nose even for this series, and I find the actual recording strangely flat and cheap. But goddamn if this isn’t the centerpiece showtune of the first High School Musical film. Ortega mines that incredible cafeteria set for all its worth, Sharpay lording over the entire school through her mean girl force of personality. The dancers are flying left and right, and there’s so much hammy glee in the vignettes of the clique stereotypes unraveling. Ortega is so good at large-scale group choreography direction, and he gets to show it off here.
One anecdote about this song: There’s a tall, lanky guy in the skateboarder group played by an actor named Ryan Templeman who steals the show. He has a couple hysterical deliveries and an ineffable aura of stoned befuddlement. He deserves some sort of award or spinoff. But at one point I read a news story about a different actor from the skateboarding clique, Dutch Whitlock, getting arrested for armed robbery. Except, when I recalled this news story months later, I incorrectly remembered it as the tall guy, Templeman. And I incorrectly remembered him dying instead of getting arrested. So for a few years, whenever I watched this film, I thought to myself “RIP tall stoner, you were too good for this world.” It was a big relief when I learned he still walks the earth with us.
Tier 1: Masterpiece
8. “What Time Is It?” (HSM2)
If you wanted to give someone a quick primer on what makes the High School Musical musical numbers special, you couldn’t do much better than “What Time Is It,” the electric opener to Part 2. (In fact, I recall Disney essentially used the clip as a trailer for High School Musical 2.) It’s got a little bit of every character and cast member. Ortega is firing on all cylinders — long tracking shots dancing down hallways, school-themed props and classroom sets, and clever blocking. The choreography is an aerobic jubilee. These three minutes are more fun than the entirety of Wicked’s 17-hour runtime, or whatever it was.
7. “All for One” (HSM2)
“All For One” might be my favorite piece of music in the entire series, a soaring surf rock dance song. I’ve included it on many a summer playlist. And the production nearly matches the song’s giddiness — a pool party bonanza with color saturation turned to 11. The cast is really going for it, too. Hudgens in particular must have been in a good mood the day of filming because she’s really projecting alluring charisma. It’s a trait of hers that otherwise ebbs and flows from scene to scene in the series with no discernible logic.
Miley Cyrus has a small cameo in this song. She’s wearing a lime green top. You can see her in the background of the wide shots, and she gets about half a second in center frame around the 3:44 mark.
6. “I Want It All” (HSM3)
This nearly-five-minute number is the most elaborate production of the entire series, Ortega and co. going all out to give Sharpay a send-off worthy of her diva status. She and Ryan sing about their glamorous future across six or so different mise-en-scenes and costume changes (including a strange bit that appears to have inspired the “Bad Romance” music video). “I Want It All” is the most showstopping, balls-to-the-wall moment of the third High School Musical — you can see that bigger budget popping.
The entire song has the feeling of pastiche to it: I think it’s evoking classic Broadway and/or MGM musicals, but I confess I haven’t seen enough of either to really pinpoint it. But the theatrical energy is off the charts.
5. “Breaking Free” (HSM1)
There’s a moment early in this song, before the vocals have kicked in, when Zac Efron turns to Vanessa Hudgens and stares into her eyes for a moment before singing the first lyric. It’s a moment so pregnant with chemistry and possibility that, whenever I watch it, it seems inevitable that this movie would become legendary. Of course High School Musical would be a crossover sensation and tween zeitgeist. That glance single-handedly justifies the entire Disney Channel Original Movie endeavor: special things can happen if you luck into the right talent, the right material, and the right moment.
Then all of that tension explodes into a midtempo pop love song — one whose composition is on the generic side, but one that soars nonetheless. The scene is completely sold by Efron (plus vocalist Seeley) and Hudgens. As previously mentioned, I think there’s a good case Darbus should have cast Ryan and Sharpay as the leads. But when I watch the movie leading up to “Breaking Free” and witness it as the film’s climax, I get it. I am stirred. If “Breaking Free” does not elicit at least a small thrill in your heart, then we simply do not consume stories and art in the same way.
4. “Fabulous” (HSM2)
The lyrics of a High School Musical song are rarely as interesting as everything around them, but “Fabulous” actually makes me laugh. Check this early stanza:
Iced tea imported from England
Lifeguards imported from Spain
Towels imported from Turkey
And turkey imported from Maine
That’s witty!
“Fabulous” is “Gaston” but for a rich bitch, a thumping anthem for the villain you love-to-hate and hate-to-love. It features a pink grand piano submerged in a swimming pool and some of the brightest colors ever transmitted to television screens. Ortega shoots top-down, geometric pool shots and synchronized swimming choreography to match the over-the-top glitz Tisdale in her designer costumes command. Masterpiece.
3. “Bet on It” (HSM2)
Zendaya. Sabrina Carpenter. Demi Lovato. The Jonas Brothers. Hillary Duff. Brenda Song (Culkin). Debbie Reynolds. Disney Channel has elevated the profiles of plenty of important, generational talent in their original films. And yet they never hit a bigger casting home run than Zac Efron as Troy Bolton. Dude can barely sing but he’s Kirk Gibson in the ninth inning of the 1988 World Series, hobbling to glory. He not only captures his ridiculous closeted drama-geek character, he makes you care about him thanks to that wacky, relentless intensity and self-doubt he projects.
Efron’s peak moment is his golf-themed existential crisis in the center of High School Musical 2. I did not know clothes could be this black, nor eyes this blue, nor turf this green. Every dramatic gesture is perfect. Every camera cut is essential. Every camera stare is soul-shearing. I even love the CGI water reflection. Will I be an Efron defender for life? Bet on it.
2. “I Don’t Dance” (HSM2)
I’m not the first to point out that competitive sports are kinda homoerotic: Two groups of sweaty men in tight uniforms grappling over leather balls, trying to “score.”
“I Don’t Dance” is a first-rate bit of satire about that topic, possibly the funniest and horniest thing you can stream on Disney+. Chad and Ryan merge musical theater and the baseball diamond into a hysterical culture clash — theater kids hitting dingers and ballplayers launching into jetés across the infield. The choreography and direction are superb and elaborate, crackling more every time I watch.
Ortega — a comfortably out gay man — works in some innuendos into the lyrics and dancing. In case it wasn’t obvious enough, the song ends with Chad and Ryan having swapped clothes while sitting together in the dugout. Genius.
1. “We’re All in This Together” (HSM1)
As if “Breaking Free” wasn’t enough of a payoff, Ortega sends us off with this rousing marching band-cheerleader-singalong anthem. The choreography is simple enough to make you want to dance along and complicated enough to look dazzling in the hands (and feet) of professionals. Ortega uses the geography of a high school gym to make a cast of dozens look like a cast of thousands. It’s a huge song and production, and you’ll be chanting “together! together! together, everyone!”
Brilliant. Perfect. Amazing. All the other adjectives. To me, that’s High School Musical. To me, that’s cinema.
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Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.