Disney faces a unique challenge: With no magic fountain of youth to keep its stars perpetual teenagers, each live-action Disney franchise arrives with a built-in shelf life. The last thing the Mouse needs is for its Noxzema fresh starlets to expedite their race to adulthood by posing for nude photographs. Disney can’t completely control what its stars do outside the studio, so perhaps that’s why it overcompensates by having its stars record the most saccharine, childish albums possible. A cornerstone of the High School Musical franchise, Hudgens is now 19 years old and, thanks to some infamous photos, as familiar among adult audiences as tweens, but she barely sounds 12 years old on her bubbly new album, Identified. Hudgens sasses Fergie-like over Gwen Stefani electro-pop, rarely touching on matters loftier than dancing, moving and how good it feels to dance and move. Tonight, she co-headlines the Wisconsin State Fair’s Main Stage with her High School Musical cohort, Corbin Bleu, at 7 p.m.
Vanessa Hudgens
Tonight @ the Wisconsin State Fair - 7 p.m.