Most Likely To Succeed

How ASCAP songwriters helped make Disney's High School Musical into one of the year's greatest — and unexpected — success stories.

By Melinda Newman

High School Musical could just as easily be called "ASCAP Musical.": Ten of the 11 songs for the smash Disney Channel original movie and soundtrack were written or co-written by ASCAP members. Even if you don't share a home with one of the millions of 9-to-14-year-olds who has helped make High School Musical the Grease of the Tweener generation, it is impossible to escape the phenomenon. By year's end, the double- Emmy winner will have aired 12 times on the Disney Channel since premiering Jan. 20. The DVD moved a staggering 400,000 copies its first day of release in May. The Hal Leonard folio has sold a remarkable 75,000 copies. And perhaps most impressively, since its January release, the Walt Disney Records soundtrack has surpassed the 3 million mark, making it the top seller of the year so far, according to Nielsen SoundScan. When the album first reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in February, it marked the first time a television soundtrack had reached the summit since Miami Vice in 1985.

No one is more pleasantly surprised by the soundtrack's success than those involved in its creation. Additionally, the soundtrack holds a Guinness World Record for charting nine songs from the collection simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

"We thought it was going to fall flat on its face or be a really cool record and sell half a million records if the kids really liked the songs," admits Brian Rawlings, VP of Creative for Walt Disney Music Company, the publishing arm for ASCAP copyrights at Disney.

"No one knew it was going to sell that many records," seconds songwriter Jamie Houston, who wrote two tunes for the project including the Emmy-nominated "Breaking Free."

Whereas most musicals are written by one team, time constraints required using a host of writers. "They had about 90 days," Rawlings says. Also, because the CD was supposed to sound like a contemporary pop album, not just a movie soundtrack, "it needed different writers and producers."

Disney turned to its staff writers for the bulk of the songs. As has been the goal of Buena Vista Music Group president David Agnew, to whom the publishing division reports, the company signs songwriters who can pen tunes across Disney's many platforms, including television and theatrical musicals, its multiple record labels and even theme park attractions. Outside writers for High School Musical were recruited only when needed. "We had to fill in some spots with some very specific things that the director wanted feel-wise," says Rawlings. "Fortunately, it's basically a staff-written project."

In addition to Houston, other ASCAP members on the project are Matthew Gerrard, Robbie Nevil, Ray Cham, Greg Cham, Andy Dodd, Adam Watts, David N. Lawrence and Faye Greenberg.

Gerrard originally wanted to pass. "Brian did convince me of the merits of doing this because I was generally doing pop songs for pop artists." Indeed, Gerrard co-wrote Kelly Clarkson's "Breakaway" and numerous other songs for such acts as Jessica Simpson, Melissa Etheridge, JoJo and Smash Mouth.

The song ideas began flowing at the first meeting between Disney execs and director Kenny Ortega. Recalls Rawlings: "Even at that initial summit, Ortega had a million song ideas. He gets up in the first meeting and starts jumping around."

Rawlings jokes that Ortega "wanted to hire Rodgers and Hart," but quickly learned "economically, we're making a TV movie for Disney, it wasn't a $40 million extravaganza."

The selected songwriters were subsequently assigned scenes and given direction from Ortega. "You sit down and say here's the parameters of what they need the song to say. It's so out of the realm of what I normally do," says Houston, who has written hits for Santana, Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Paige among others. "It's actually a lot of fun. Not every song is a cure for cancer."

Gerrard and Nevil, who started writing together non-exclusively as a team more than two years ago, say writing to order can be simpler than starting from scratch. "When we do the powwows with Steve [Vincent, ABC Cable Networks Group's director of production] and Kenny, they really give specifics," says Nevil, who remains well known for his ‘80s' hit, "C'est La Vie," as well as writing for Ashlee and Jessica Simpson, Destiny's Child, Mark McGrath, Jesse McCartney and others. "I'm writing down notes furiously because they have a vision. On that level, it's easier. On another level, you really have to make sure to adhere to it. There's not as much freedom."

"It is a different process than you sitting in your room writing whatever you want," agrees Gerrard.

All three say a key to writing for Disney's kids is to keep it clean, while keeping it real. "It's definitely a different state of mind and it's going to be about positive thinking and the kind of things you'd tell your kids, but it's not dumbing it down," Nevil says.

Amazingly, the album's sales success came without benefit of mainstream airplay. Walt Disney Records digitally delivered a remix of "Breaking Free" to pop radio, but gave it no major push, Rawlings says, because the album was already flying off the shelves due to Radio Disney and Disney Channel exposure. It was also a blockbuster via the Internet. "Those kids all have iPods," says Rawlings. "The first and easiest thing to do when you're in middle school is go and download it." The album hit No. 1 on both iTunes and Amazon.

And nearly a year after its release, the juggernaut continues. High School Musical is proving to be just as popular outside the U.S. as within. The album has already hit No. 1 in Australia and the successful rollout throughout Latin America and Europe shows High School Musical translates worldwide. A concert tour featuring the performers from the movie starts in November; amateur productions of the movie are already up and running. A second, expanded DVD version comes out in December. And, to no one's surprise, the same team will reassemble for High School Musical 2, which will debut on the Disney Channel by next summer.

So what does this kind of success mean for a publishing company? "The phone rings an awful lot," says Rawlings.

And for a songwriter? Houston, who is writing and co-producing a new album for Island Def Jam artist Jon McLaughlin, says it is too soon to tell other than "I'm huge with my nieces and nephews." But on a more serious note, he hopes the result will be an expansion of musical borders. "It should be a wake-up call in a lot of ways that there's potential life for all different kinds of music and it's about accessibility. A lot of people tend to be sheep and chase what everyone else is doing. [It's about] melody and just good solid songs. If it's good, they'll dig it."


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