Various Artists – High School Musical 2
Artist: Various Artists
Album: High School Musical 2 OST
Release Date: August 14, 2007, 2007
1. What Time Is It? (HSM Cast)
This is an amazing opening track for both the soundtrack and the movie. There’s so much energy in the performance of this song from everyone. I love the call and response in the chorus. Plus, everyone more or less sounds pretty good throughout this song. I also really like the Hudgens and Efron duets during this song as their harmonies are quite good
2. Fabulous (Sharpay Evans)
This song still annoys me, from the vocals to the composition. Tisdale sounds awful all throughout this song as she twists her vocals all the time and the melody isn’t pleasant at all and don’t flow all that well. To me, this whole song is a mess.
3. Work This Out (HSM Cast)
This song is so whiny, and my general annoyance begins around this sections of the soundtrack. The song also doesn’t have a melody that flows well with the strong percussion in the background, although I do like the banging of the kitchenware in this song; it’s a nice interlude. The melody itself just doesn’t work that well and sounds awkward.
4. You are the Music in Me (Kelsi Nielsen, Gabriella Montez, Troy Bolton)
While the actress for Kelsi is a nice addition to the beginning of the song to tie in the story of te movie to the song, she really has no resonance at all at the beginning and fails to even reach some of the notes at the beginning. The song, however, sounds a lot better once Hudgens comes in. While not as good as some of the other Efron and Hudgens duets, it’s a decent song and flows decently throughout. I like the addition of a background chorus of vocals near the end.
5. I Don’t Dance (Chad Danforth, Ryan Evans)
This is probably the equivalent to “Getcha Head in the Game” from the first soundtrack, except it’s between Grabeel and Bleu. It’s not as catchy as its predecessor; however, it’s still is rather catchy with it’s strong bass line. It does get very repetitive after awhile, though, and my attention quickly wanders off as I’m listening to it, and as I was watching the movie.
6. You are the Music in Me (Sharpay Version)
Tisdale continues to sing off keys in this song. The beginning is extremely horrendous, and while the transformation into an upbeat song is quite decent, the vocal lines in this song are jus horrible to listen to, aside from the Sharpettes’ background vocals. Efron’s vocals lines just don’t match with the main melody for the majority of the song (although I believe this could have been done intentionally for the movie’s storyline).
7. Gotta Go My Own Way (Gabriella Montez, Troy Bolton)
This is probably the second time in the movie where I actually liked the song. The melody for this song is gorgeous, as is the accompaniment for it. Hudgens actually pulls off the solo parts of this song quite well, although sometimes not reaching the pitch completely. Efron starts into this song quite strongly, although the little additions between Hudgen’s main melody that he does later on are lacking energy and emotion. They sound soulless in between Hudgens’ emotional performance.
8. Bet on It (Troy Bolton)
As Efron’s solo song, it’s extremely catchy. He sings with plenty of pulse and although the song is repetitive, he adds lots of accent throughout the song. Efron does alright with his vocals, although I don’t like his falsetto much near the end, and his singing seems a bit tense and doesn’t seem to have much resonance to his singing.
9. Everyday (Troy Bolton, Gabriella Montez)
Efron sings well at the beginning and with a nice vibrato at the beginning, although Hudgens starts off a bit off with a really thin voice. Her singing remains thin and empty throughout the majority of the song, while Efron has a stronger, fuller tone here. Hudgens sticks out in a bad way in this song. The song itself is quite nice, although nothing outstanding. I really love the ending of this song with the addition of the rest of the cast. They sound really good and they blend quite well.
10. All for One (HSM Cast)
… Why I’m I thinking of Hello!Project whenever I see the title of this song? *fails* In any case, this song as a closing isn’t as strong as the first movie’s closing song. It’s an okay song, but the vocals don’t contain as much energy as I would have expected from a closing song. The melody itself is pretty catchy, but the vocals don’t reflect the level of catchiness at all.
11. Humuhumunukunukuapua’a -Bonus- (Sharpay and Ryan Evans)
I don’t even know if I typed the track name correctly XD. Seriously, leave it to Tisdale and Grabeel to pull out an amusing song out of this movie. It has a bit of a Hawaiian sound of it and it amuses me. The song is seriously kind of weird, but the level of amusement is higher than the weird. I want to seriously watch this scene. Somehow.
Overall -
Favourite Track: What Time is It?
Right after I watched the movie, the first thing I thought was that the music is nowhere as good as the first album. Upon listening to this album, it reaffirmed my reaction to the movie: it’s just not that good. While the first album was loaded with some pretty energetic, fun music, the second album let me down in many ways with dull songs. While there are a few good songs, the majority of the album was pretty much forgettable.
*Movie OST, *Soundtracks, Ashley Tisdale, High School Musical, Vanessa Hudgens, Various Artists | Megumi | December 28, 2007
Do you think we should have a High School Musical category? We already have 3 albums reviewed, and by the looks of it, we’re likely to add more in the future.
-Tsuki
^ XD I was thinking about it since you mentioned it earlier. I just don’t know where to sort it o.o; Since everything we have is by artist =x
- Megu
Can you put it as a subcategory to *Soundtracks?\
-Tsuki
^ … tru dat. XD