Season 3 of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series has ended their stint at Camp Shallow Lake and are heading back to East High. Our beloved Wildcats will be featured extras in the filming of High School Musical 4, which might be a plot line too meta to function. It might even create a tear in the time-space continuum, we won’t know until it premieres.
Before we get the possible world-ending storyline, let’s highlight the best of what season 3 had to offer. Just like last season, I love creating conflict, so here are the Top 5 songs from Camp Shallow Lake. They are in no particular order, because I like conflict, but I don’t like the possibility of a Twitter war with HSMTMTS fans.
“It’s On”
When I first heard that we were heading to summer camp this season, I was expecting Camp Rock to make a glorious appearance. How can you have a Disney Channel-centric show and not feature the greatest movie about summer camp ever recorded to film? While we received a few covers throughout the eight episodes, the highlight was this Camp Rock 2 bop that has become so essential to Disney that they still inexplicably use it in “ABC Summer Fun & Games” commercials. This arrangement was a bit zippier, a bit more modern, and a bit more eligible for the role of “song I want played as I’m lowered into the ground.”
“Rising”
Julia Lester is slowly taking over the world. With three seasons under her belt as Ashlyn, she has also tackled Broadway this season as Little Red in the revival of Into the Woods. So what was the obvious next step? Give us a soaring ballad as her character comes to terms with her sexuality, ensemble role, and life going forward. It’s emotional, y’all! I have been screlting this every drive I’ve taken since its release.
“Finally Free”
Joshua Bassett knows how to write a hook. He has some phenomenal pop music off the show (“Telling Myself” and “Feel Something” are doing what the other girls should be doing) and it’s wonderful that he’s been able to bring his musical talent to the show so frequently. This season opener is a delightful hint as to what's to come from Ricky and also gives us the excuse to watch him dance around a car on a hill. Sure, why not?!
“What Do You Know About Love?”
This performance was so loaded. Amidst rehearsals for Camp Shallow Lake’s Frozen production, there was the ever-flowing tension between Gina and EJ. What’s a good way to stick the proverbial knife into his stomach? Amp up the love story between herself and Ricky/Kristoff, of course. This walk-and-talk performance was exciting from the start, not to mention their voices on this fun Broadway duet made me appreciate the song more than I ever have.
“This Is Me”
This cover of the Demi Lovato classic (Yes. Classic. I said it.) broke me down, built me back up again, then absolutely ruined me. Emmy gets her time to shine and she gets ready to open her first musical at camp. As she sings, the rest of the cast gets ready to premiere their production after a messy, documentary-filled lead up. From that comes a more emotional interpretation of this song than what Camp Rock gave us previously. The cast singing back-up and harmonizing, bathed in spotlights, had me slip and fall into a puddle of my own tears.
Season 3 gave us some bangers, some moving tunes, and an overall wonderful eight episodes of music. Going forward, all I know is that if Ricky doesn’t sing “Scream” during season 4, I’ll be livid.