Breaking Down The Messy Brilliance Of “Stick To The Status Quo”
Legendary songs are not born, they are made in East High.
Teenage anthems are arguably some of the most important songs of a person’s life. The music that we listen to on loop during our pimply, anxious transition into adulthood secures a special place in our hearts and eardrums. For children of the late 1990s, there are a variety of songs that one could point to as the anthem that defined our adolescence, but there is one song that stands above the rest. One song that is the very definition of a cultural touchstone. One song that features an electric cello. One song that is, “Stick To The Status Quo” from High School Musical.
“Stick To The Status Quo” starts up after the callback list for the spring musical has been posted. Naturally, egotistical theater kid, Sharpay Evans and her newsboy-cap wearing brother Ryan have callbacks, but, there are others on the list including new girl Gabriella and, what’s this, popular hot-shot basketball player Troy Bolton? The school is suddenly thrust into the chaos of a paradigm shift. If Troy Bolton — the very personification of the phrase “ball is life” — is now suddenly into theater, what other secrets passions are students harboring? Could this mean that now it’s safe, nay even cool to break from the mold of your clique? Or has Troy disrupted an intricate system that must be put back in place before it collapses entirely?
The stage is set for a battle of philosophies, and what better place to duke it out than the cafeteria, the collective town square of high school. Here is where we begin our number. Sharpay Evans peers over the kingdom from the upper level as we pan down to the lunch tables, where a nervous basketball players paces from side to side, and unable to hold in his emotions any longer, and shares that he has “a confession, [his] own secret obsession and it’s making [him] lose control.”
“Everybody gather round!” the chorus cheers, surely this has something to do with basketball, or a piece of hot gossip that everyone will like to learn, right? “I bake” he confesses, the group is aghast, some move physically away from him as Corbin Bleu hisses, “What?” in a tone that would be just as appropriate if the basketball player confessed to crashing Corbin’s car while joy-riding around the town. “Not another sound!” the chorus scolds, but Pandora’s box has already been opened, and this basketball player must continue to speak his truth. “Someday, I hope to make the perfect creme brûlée.”
And this is the moment where the booming, scornful chorus comes in. Basketball players and cheerleaders dramatically leap up from their seats, grasping their temples as if they are in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and chanting a chorus of “No!” It is a glorious explosion of emotions and perfectly choreographed dance moves. This is the raw, authoritative energy of “Rose’s Turn” if Gypsy was set in a high school. This is the calculated intensity of Alec Baldwin’s “coffee is for closers only” speech. “You think I am fucking with you?” this choreography asks, “I am not fucking with you.”
“Stick to the stuff you know!” They shout, “If you want to be cool follow one simple rule don’t mess with the stuff you know, stick to the status quo!” But alas, the gate has been opened and it cannot be muscled shut again. Confessions pour out of other students like water through a broken dam. A scholarly nerd admits she has a “secret she needs to share.” “Open up, dig way down deep!” encourage the supportive chorus. Surely this secret has nothing to do with the previous character’s confession. But alas, the confession is yet another crack in the wall of this clique-castle. The nerd confesses that “hip hop is [her] passion” openly brandishing her own scarlet letter. A nerd who loves hip-hop dancing? Her nerd friends leap back from the table in disgust with every pop, lock, jam, and break. “Is that even legal?” one interrogates, unable to comprehend a justice system that would allow such foolishness. They march away from the table and point aggressively at their textbooks in an attempt to remind her where she belongs. “It is better by far to leave things as they are don’t mess with the flow, no, no!”
What comes next is the ultimate confession. The most heinous reveal that amounts in the most quotable 30 seconds of our young, millennial lives. A mop-headed skater announces that he is “ready to tell about a need that [he] cannot deny.” His classmates are again goaded into a false sense of security. “Speak your mind and you’ll be heard” they cheer. And heard he is. “I play the cello” mop-headed skater boy announces, “Awesome!” his friend responds, but then immediately follows up with, “What is it?” (the next few seconds of skater boy miming a cello and his dumbfounded friend mistakenly exclaiming, “A saw?!” is a truly excellent piece of comedy in and of itself). But alas, mop-headed skater boy clarifies the truth, “No dude, it’s like a giant violin.” “Not another word!” the other skaters shout. Duped again! The shame! But mop-headed skater boy is not done twisting the knife in their back. When asked, “Do you have to wear a costume?” our tragic mop-headed hero enthusiastically responds, “Coat and tie!” O the horror! To not only dabble in classical music but also to enjoy it? To wear a button-down shirt, not because your mom forces you to, but because you want to? For this is betrayal at its most abhorrent!
The entire cafeteria erupts into a precisely choreographed existential crisis as Sharpay watches in horror. Teens jump on tables and punch the air. Corbin Bleu’s extends all his limbs in a star jump that is as classic of a movie dance move as Dirty Dancing’s final lift or Flashdance’s water bucket scene. And just when we thought we had descended into the uttermost madness, the instrumental break comes in, and like Dante we descend into an even deeper, more raucous layer of unrest. Mop-headed skater boy is on a cafeteria table playing his cello. Teens are kicking, spinning, and lunging all over the lunchroom. Corbin Bleu hurls his basketball straight up into the air and breakdances like a sentient, rage-filled Jack Nicholson monologue. He is glorious.
Sharpay scorches the earth with her ear-shattering, “Everybody QUIET!” At this moment Gabriella enters the cafeteria accompanied by her friend Monique. A naive, doe-eyed Garbeilla turns to Monique and asks, “Why is everybody staring at you?” But Monique, ever cognizant of the high school’s dynamics replies dryly, “Not me, you.” Gabriella immediately panics because she really “can’t have people staring at her” and the entire cafeteria shakes in a chorus of “No, no, no! Stick to the stuff you know!” The students are overcome with the emotional tug-of-war happening inside their psyches. Sharpay Evans descends the stairs, staring at Gabriella with the intensity of a predator about to make a kill. After all the work Sharpay has done to carve out her niche, this brunette is going to come in and blur the lines of these rigid categories? Not on her watch!
But Gabriella, the poor, confused lamb has been thrust into a maze of teenage angst and as she hurriedly tries to weave her way out like Cinderella rushing to get home before the stroke of midnight. She slips on spilled milk and her nachos go flying…right into Sharpay’s chest. Sharpay lets out a scream that cuts through the pandemonium, breaking the musical numbers’ spell and possibly every glass in the cafeteria. Things are far worse than she ever could have imagined. New girl has dismantled her social caste system and besmirched her both figuratively and literally. With nachos. The standard rule of law is over, a new order awaits.
If “Stick To The Status Quo” were a one-act play, it would play to sold-out theaters at the Fringe Festival and get a critics pick in The New York Times. Its characters need no more than a few lines to establish the juxtaposition between what society expects of them and what interests they harbor just beneath the surface. It is both an anthem of embracing your complexities and a threat against fighting the system. It is the “One Day More” of high school cliques, layering different perspectives atop one another until it bursts in a crescendo of emotion. It is by far one of the best musical numbers of the entire film, and possibly of all the teenage musical-movies of that time period.
High school is an angsty, confusing, overdramatic mess of identity development and group dynamics. It is a tornado of hormones and growing bodies and changing your whole self every other week because god, none of this feels right and maybe if you paint your nails black and wear thick eyeliner and straighten your hair until it is as brittle as dry straw then maybe, just maybe, you’ll get closer to figuring out Who You Are, since right now you just feel like a minefield of nervous energy. That is the scattered, chaotic energy at the emotional core of “Stick To The Status Quo,” and as long as teenagers are stressed out, dumpster fires of conflicting emotion, “Stick To The Status Quo” will remain a brilliant, relatable, perfect mess.
