20 years of High School Musical: A comfort watch for an entire generation that reminds us of simpler times

Two decades later if you’re still cheering for the East High Wildcats then this one’s for you!

I remember the first time I watched High School Musical on Disney Channel. I was eight years old and Disney Channel as a concept was fascinating enough for me. Just then, they introduced me to the world of teen/pre-teen dramas. It opened doors to entertainment like never before and shaped who I am well into my late 20s. I was awestruck by everything High School Musical - the music, choreography, romance, story - it played out a fantasy any school-going-girl would want to experience in their lives. The feeling of first love, of wanting to break into a song in the middle of class and finding the people you belong with was a huge part of school life and this franchise heavily mirrored that for me on-screen. 

It was also my first introduction to musicals and discovering Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale - actors who would go on to become popular faces in Hollywood over the next couple of years. To me, these films always were and always will be a pop culture phenomenon, something I perpetually go back to when I crave a safe space or when I miss my good ol' summer vacation!

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Here’s why it continues to be a comfort watch for me and my entire generation!

The music still hits and you can never not sing along to the songs!

The songs are the biggest highlight of High School Musical, from Troy and Gabriella’s ‘Start of Something New’ on New Year’s Eve, the entire Cafeteria singing ‘Stick to the Status Quo’ to Sharpay and Ryan’s pop version to all of Kelcee’s songs to all the Wildcats singing ‘We’re All in this Together’, the HSM soundtrack will always be iconic and make for some amazing karaoke tracks we’ll know lyric by lyric till the end of time!

The story validated the fact that we can have more than one dream!

Troy wasn’t just the ‘athlete’, Gabriella wasn’t just the ‘nerd’, the story heavily encouraged kids to explore beyond what they are told to do all their lives. It highlights the fact that two truths could exist at the same time. A basketball player could totally love singing and or even bake the best creme brulee! Who makes the rules anyway?

It reminds us of a specific era of pop culture that we deeply miss

High School Musical isn’t just a movie, it's a time capsule. It brings back the feeling of catching a movie on a TV channel before streaming apps ever existed. We saw the rise of early 2000s Disney Channel actors and they were the first introduction to western pop culture to most of us. Watching HSM brings back memories of school hallways, flip phones, chatting via email and so much more we did in an era that no longer exists. 

Troy Bolton was cemented as our first crush

While the songs and the story are a reason why HSM is what it is today, a huge part of it is also because an entire generation thought they would date someone like Troy Bolton in their school. Someone who’d break all norms and pacts with his boy gang to support your ambitions, sing songs for you in the rain and buy you a necklace with his initials on it while he’s at it. He was the OG favourite pop culture boyfriend before social media even made it a thing!

20 years later, maybe it’s okay to admit we all secretly envied Sharpay more than Gabriella

If you were a girly girl, pink must have been your go to colour and who better than Sharpay to show us how to adorn that color. She made pink cooler in every way possible. From her shiny pink locker to her convertible pink car in her pink parking spot, she was every girl’s dream back in the early 2000s. 

The nostalgia the movie brings is a lot more layered than we think!

HSM reminds me of a version of myself that believed in happy endings and everything that was shown to me on-screen. It also reminds me of how my biggest problem with the movie was the scholastic decathlon and the basketball championship falling on the same day, but how easily that conflict was fixed. Simpler times called for light hearted stories as compared to the energy that’s demanded of us constantly as an audience today!

So as Troy Bolton said ever so confidently, ‘Once a Wildcat, Always a Wildcat.' May we always come back to this world when we miss a piece of our childhood!

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