“High School Musical” Reaches That Awkward Age

noah | October 21, 2008 11:00 am

Our look at the closing lines of the biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Disney’s soundtrack for the heartthrob-studded High School Musical 3, which lands in stores today:

• “Youth has always been a commodity in popular art, but the best teen pop provides at least the illusion of freshness and wonder. There are flickers of those qualities here—in Vanessa Hudgens’ sweetly nasal singing, for instance—but overall, this Musical is a strangely joyless production. ” [USA Today]

• “All in all, it’s pretty routine HSM with very little to get an adult listener doing anything other than hoping that the next ‘I wanna be with you’ tune ends soon. Still, it’s not that different than what passes for grownup music on the radio these days, and writer Robbie ‘C’est La Vie’ Nevil can at least pen a track that doesn’t need to come with a warning. I suppose that will come with Freshman Year Musical: Rush Week.” [canada.com]

• “Since this music holds no appeal for anyone over age 9, as soon as the original fans pass that quickly approaching benchmark, they’ll totally lose interest – except for some guilty-pleasure nostalgia a decade away. In other words, fans of great kids’ music needn’t fret for long. This, too, shall pass.” [NY Daily News]

• “Truth is, Ashley steals the show (again) in our book. Her knock-’em-dead, egotistical, going-for-Broadway vow, ‘I Want It All,’ really is the most amusing and only theatrically minded song in the entire ‘musical’ score this time, surrounded by pleasant but all too similar love duets by Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens that didn’t need any silly distraction like a plot to hang on.” [Philadelphia Daily News]