I absolutely adore the HSM franchise! It’s officially been 20 years since the first High School Musical movie landed on Disney Channel.

So let’s talk about some interesting knowledge linked to these epic movies that still hold a special place in the hearts of millennials everywhere.

Vanessa was about to audition for American Idol before she auditioned for High School Musical. If Vanessa brought her powerhouse vocals to American Idol, there’s a huge chance she would have gone far, but selfishly, I’m really glad she skipped out on that audition and went for High School Musical instead. She was perfect as Gabriella in my book.

Lucas Grabeel originally auditioned for Troy Bolton before he was cast as Ryan Evans. I absolutely love Lucas Grabeel, but I feel like he made so much more sense as Ryan instead of Troy. Troy was your all American, masculine, athletic type of guy. Lucas played the artsy choreographer role of Ryan much more smoothly. In my opinion.

Can I Have This Dance is considered the top song from the entire High School Musical franchise of all time since it has more streams than every other song from the movies, by far. Can I Have This Dance has over 225 million streams on Spotify as of this publication. On a personal note, I heavily considered learning the choreography for this song with my husband for our wedding day, but we ended up not having enough time to dedicate to that process. But clearly, I think the song is absolutely beautiful.

The second most popular song from the franchise is We’re All in This Together with over 169 million Spotify streams. Some people might consider this song incredibly corny, but the song is about unity, friendship, and coming together to become the best version of yourself, which is probably why this song resonates with so many people and is still so heavily streamed today. This song really encompasses the overall energy of High School Musical.