For Keith Abrahamsson, A&R of Brooklyn-based indie music label Mexican Summer, music and surf go hand-in-hand.

Music colliding with visuals of epic surf left an impression on him from an early age as a fan of '70s and '80s heavily scored surf films like Crystal Voyager, the Australian film that follows surfer George Greenough on his quest in search of the perfect surf spot. "I think there's always been a really crucial marriage," he says on a phone call with the Recording Academy. "Music was such a crucial driving force to those moving images."

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In a new feature film, Abrahamsson, who founded Mexican Summer with Andres Santo Domingo in 2008, wants you to escape to the place where surf and music intrinsically meet: the ocean. 

Inspired by the spirit of the films he grew up watching, Abrahamsson's label joined forces with New York based surf shop Pilgrim Surf + Supply, owned by Abrahamsson's friend and film director Chris Gentile, to embark on a journey with eight surfers and 16 musicians. Filmed in Mexico, the Maldives, Iceland, Brooklyn and Los Angeles, the film captures how surfers find their epic wave and interact with local culture, and how musicians, Mexican Summer artists and friends, including  Allah-Las, Connan Mockasin, Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT and Peaking Lights, score the real-time surf. 

Poetically narrarated by the late avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas, the film aims to "Really capture the essence of that location with the music and the way in which it was shot," Abrahamsson says. At the same time the film expands some of the genres that may be associated with surf:  "We didn't really take much inspiration from that particular aesthetic of surf rock. I think we wanted to expand it a little bit."

Before the film premieres in Los Angeles at The Palace Theatre on June 15 and the original soundtrack is released on June 14, the Recording Academy spoke with Abrahamsson, about the film's concept, surf music, environmentalism and more. 

How did this project come about? And why surfing?

I skated a lot coming up as a kid. I never really surfed when I was younger, but I was always turned on by the surf aesthetic, specifically the soundtracks. You know, a lot of the more classic films that were coming out in the '70s and '80s, those soundtracks had a lot of appeal to me. Then I started surfing probably about five or so years ago. So I'm a fairly new surfer, but the music had always resonated with me from those films. I worked with a lot of artists who are also surfers. Then I became friends with Chris Gentile who directed the film and also owns his own surf company called Pilgrim.

[The idea for the film] kind of just organically happened. I had taken a trip to Nicaragua with a bunch of musicians and some surfers with the idea of making a film. This trip didn't end up being part of what ended up being this self-discovery film. We took this inaugural trip to Nicaragua, it was kind of disaster. It ended up being ... one disaster after the next while we were down there. We didn't end up really using any of that footage ... We knew we wanted to still make the film, so we just decided that we had to recalibrate things a little bit. I talked to Chris, he knew about the project. We talked a little bit more about it and decided that it would be great for him to get involved in it. Then we really ... rejigged the concept. We just expanded the idea a bunch more together and it became this bigger, more ambitious project once he got involved.

You mentioned you got into surfing and you also really liked the music. Can you talk about some of the soundtracks or songs that really spoke to you?

We've actually reissued a bunch of these soundtracks on our anthology. But a lot of the usual suspects that people who are surfing would know about: Morning Of The Earth, Five Summer Stories, Pacific Vibrations, Crystal Voyager. I mean, I could go on and on.

I wanted to talk about surf rock because I feel like that's what a lot of people think of when they think of surfing and music. Did it inspire it or did it inform the film at all?

Not really, no. I would say surf rock —in the more traditional way people think of it like when they think of adventures or music that you might have heard in Endless Summer which is incredible music, and we love Bruce Brown and everything that he did—we didn't really take much inspiration from that particular aesthetic of surf rock. I think we wanted to expand it a little bit. I think one of the bands that contributes to the soundtrack, the Allah-Las, they have a little bit more of a classic sound. More instrumental. More jangly kind of stuff. But it goes much further out, I would say. There's a lot of more ambient music. There's stuff that's more adventurous, more experimental pop writing, more traditional dance-oriented stuff with Peaking Lights. So it's a mixed bag of styles that we incorporate across the film. I would say we tried to step away from the more traditional surf rock thing.

For people that aren't familiar with surf culture and its relationship to music, how big of presence is music in surfing?

It's crucial. It's the same thing with like skate videos or classic skiing movies or snowboarding videos. When I was a kid a lot of the music I got into was through skateboarding videos. A lot of the punk rock and record labels that I found out about were really via [skate] ... I mean obviously this was pre-internet, too ... that culture was pretty instrumental in introducing me to a lot of music that I may not have otherwise come across. I think the same thing for surf movies throughout the '70s and '80s. One really helps feel the other, I think. There's not that many surf films that were like Endless Summer where there was an actual narrative with dialogue and a narrator. I mean, there was music that was part of that film, but it wasn't as integral a part of it as some of the later more mid-70's and later '70s. And then when you got into the '80s music was such a crucial driving force to those moving images. I guess as a long-winded way of explaining it to you, I think there's always been a really crucial marriage of the audio-visual with those kind of action-sports films. If that's what you want to call them.

The film is about the relationship between music and the waves. I'm wondering what that relationship means to you.

That's kind of a hard one to answer. I think it's an extension of what I was just saying before more than anything. I feel like when I see surfing or see skateboarding often times I will associate some of those things with music that I've heard in a film in the past. I always ... music is pretty intrinsically tied to these things for me. It always has been since I was a kid. I don't know if that exactly answers what the relationship means to me, but they just seem very ... like they're married. They're like one. One entity almost.

Is it kind of like the soundtrack to what you're doing type of thing?

Yeah, I guess so. I think a lot of people who grew up either skating or surfing or whatever would probably say the same thing. Maybe you even, if you're out there, you might even think of part of movie that you might have grown up watching. Or a certain song or something. I feel it just becomes part of you in a way.

You went to Mexico, you went to the Maldives, and Iceland in the film . Why these places?

We wanted to really strike some pretty distinct environmental differences with each of the places. I think a lot of people think when they think of surf locations, you kind of think like beautiful beaches ... like Windex color waves breaking. That's cool, the Maldives definitely had that vibe, but I think we were really interested in having a different flavor every trip. That kind of translated across everything. I think we wanted the environment and the waves to feel specific. We wanted the music for that particular location to feel specific. The camera shots. The edits. Everything ... So there's three vignettes in the film, and I think each vignette we wanted to just really give it a very distinct film that matched that particular location. When we were in Iceland it was very by design that we went there. We used a lot of drone footage. A lot of wide-panning crazy shots of the landscape. It's a little bit more bleak because Iceland the time of year we were there, that's just what it was, it was cold. It was kind of rainy a lot of the time. I think Connan Mockasin and Andrew VanWyngarden's soundtrack really reflects that feeling. I think we wanted to mirror that across all three vignettes. Really capture the essence of that location with the music and the way in which it was shot.

I went to Puerto Rico recently and as I was landing there was a whole bunch of plastic in the water. Is there any message you wanted to send involving environmentalism and taking care of the water with the film?

We saw the same kind of conditions pretty much everywhere we went. The same thing that you're talking about in Puerto Rico. It's just incredibly upsetting. I think there are a lot of foundations out there doing great things like Save the Waves and Conservation International. We're involved with some of those people on deeper levels, but also they're involved in supporting the film. At its screening and in general we're going to be working with Save the Waves to show the film during their festivals. They're very deeply involved in the conservation of shorelines, trying to do clean up with plastic ... It's not even really a surfing issue, right? It's a human issue. So I think anyone that's involved in ... just alive should care about it, you know? Which I know is not the case across the board but ... It's of course and obviously a very important issue for all of us.

In the film, footage of surfers is shown while the musicians are recording music. Tell me more about that setup.

The intention of that, that's a classic way for people to do scoring. We would go on these trips, you know the musicians came on the trips as well. Afterwards we'd go right into the studio. What we would do, we kind of whipped together this extremely rough cut for them. There was no real sequence, it was just a bunch of rough footage that we through together that could be projected in their space while they were composing material. That's what you're seeing is just them watching the footage and writing. Really the goal was to have him be really immersed in the trip and inspired by that experience, and then take that back with him to the studio. Being able to project the footage was just a way to try to keep them in that moment a little bit.

You wanted each vignette to represent each place you went to. Did you say, "Hey, this is kind of the vibe we had in Mexico, can you bring this out?" Or did you let the artists, the musicians, do their thing?

It was very free. I think we didn't want to bog anybody down with too many parameters. We just wanted the trip to do its work and then let them write whatever felt natural after that, you know?

You've got Peaking Lights involved. Andrew from MGMT. How did all these artists get involved in the documentary?

The majority of them we work with already. Peaking Lights, we worked with them in the past. We've put records out with them before. Connan is on the label. Andrew is ... Allah-Las are on the label. Andrew is just a really close friend of ours. He's played and collaborated with a lot of people on the label. And he's a really avid surfer. It just felt really natural to have him involved. And he and Connan are super close friends, so pairing them together as a writing pair felt pretty natural.

How did Jonas Mekas get involved in the film?

So we have a publishing and print here where we do books as well. It's called Anthology Editions, and we had done a book with him earlier that year. Well, we had been working on it with him for a couple of years. So we kind of had this connection to him. It didn't really occur to us that he would be good for the piece, and then I thought to myself, [to have him involved] would ... add this kind of ... I mean, he's such a legend in his own right in avant-garde cinema ... I think we really wanted to add this extra layer of, "What the f***? This is so weird." And I think it does add that. It just adds this really surreal layer to the film that we were hoping it would. He's got this thick Lithuanian accent and ... I don't know it feels like it fit perfectly. It was always meant to be. It was kind of an eleventh hour thing to be honest. 

The film is called Self Discovery For Social Survival. How did you come up with the name?

It's kind of a mouthful, isn't it? Yeah. I just call it "Self Discovery", I never say the whole thing ... It just felt appropriate giving the times that we live in. I think given the times, not like we're trying to make some grand political statement because that is not what we're about, but I think we wanted to give people something escapist. Something that they could watch and hopefully attach themselves to. And see some of these waves and feel inspired and be like, "Oh, maybe I could do that. That doesn't look totally life threatening and crazy." That was a big part of what we wanted to do, and I think ... Yeah, giving people just a little piece of escapism in this time we live in.

What do you hope viewers get out of the documentary? 

The trips themselves were taken in such small windows. The way in which surf films are made, obviously, you're at the mercy of nature to cooperate and deliver you good conditions. I think we were really lucky to walk into each of these situations with ten-day windows, basically, with each of the trips and to get usable footage. So I think what we really wanted in the end was to create something that was going to moving and that would make us feel like we accomplished what we set out to do. I think also important to note that having Jonas Mekas narrate the project was very surreal and a dream. It was one of the last projects he worked on before he passed away, so that was amazing. I think all around we just wanted it to be a very collaborative and creatively fulfilling project, and I think that we got that for sure.

Self Discovery For Social Survival is out digitally on June 18 and available for pre-order now at iTunes.

How A California Fire Affected Tame Impala's Much-Awaited Next Album

Mastodon's drummer and singer Brann Dailor assures you he did not purchase his shiny golden gramophone at his local shopping mall.

“I won that! I’m telling you. It’s a major award,” he says in the latest episode of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

The metal musician won his first GRAMMY award for Best Metal Performance for Mastodon's “Sultan’s Curse” at the 2018 GRAMMYs.

“‘Sultan’s Curse’ was the jumping-off point for the whole theme of the album,” he explains. “The protagonist is walking alone in the desert, and the elements have been cursed by a Sultan.”

It’s a metaphor for illness — during the creation of the album, the band’s guitarist Bill Kelliher’s mother had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and bassist Troy Sanders’s wife was battling breast cancer.

For the band, the GRAMMY award represented their version of the American Dream and culmination of their career work. Even if Mastodon didn’t win the award, Dailor was happy to be in the room: “We felt like we weren't supposed to be there in the first place! But it's an incredible moment when they actually read your name."

Press play on the video above to learn the complete story behind Brann Dailor's award for Best Metal Performance, and check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

Brann Dailor Talks 20 Years Of Mastodon, New 'Medium Rarities' Collection And How He Spent The Coronavirus Lockdown Drawing Clowns

In her latest track "Off Switch," Australian dance-pop artist VASSY captures the exhilarating intensity of a budding romance. She loves the rush but, at the same time, wishes she could fight the feeling, even if only for a few seconds.

"There's something electric between you and I/ The way we connected I can't describe/ We're right on the edge of blurring the lines/ Don't know why I'm scared of this rush inside," she sings in the intro. "I wish my heart, it had an off switch/ 'Cause, boy, I don't know how to stop this."

In this episode of Global Spin, watch VASSY deliver an acoustic performance of her track, playing guitar and using a pair of castanets for added rhythm.

VASSY released "Off Switch" on Jan. 5 with an electrifying music video swirling with vibrant neon lights. 

Recently she wrapped a string of appearances supporting Aqua's United States leg of their world tour and earlier this month, performed a headlining show in San Diego. On May 18, she will take the stage at the BASSINTHEGRASS music festival in Darwin, Australia.

Press play on the video above to watch VASSY's lively performance of "Off Switch," and remember to check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of Global Spin.

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In April 1993, journalist Stuart Maconie coined the term Britpop for a Select magazine article celebrating the UK's fight back against the dominance of American rock. Remarkably, London four-piece Blur weren't even mentioned in the story. And yet, frontman Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, and drummer Dave Rowntree would provide the catalyst for the scene's mainstream breakthrough.

Just a year later, Blur released what many consider to be Britpop's defining statement. Parklife served as a colorful, vibrant, and incredibly infectious love letter to all things Anglocentric, drawing upon the nation's great cultural heritage while also foreshadowing what was to come. And it instantly struck a chord with homegrown audiences desperate for guitar music that wasn't drowning in abject misery, and better reflected their day-to-day lives.

Remarkably, Albarn had predicted Parklife's success four years earlier. As he declared to music writer David Cavanagh in 1990, "When our third album comes out, our place as the quintessential English band of the '90s will be assured. That is a simple statement of fact."

Three decades after its game-changing release, here's a look at how Parklife forever changed both Blur's career trajectory and the history of British rock.

It Kickstarted Britpop's Greatest Rivalry

In one of those great rock coincidences, Blur's third LP hit the shelves just 24 hours after "Supersonic" gave a then-relative unknown Manchester outfit named Oasis their first ever UK Top 40 single. And the two bands would remain intertwined (perhaps begrudgingly so) from then on, culminating in the most high-profile chart battle in British music history.

You could argue that Oasis' Noel Gallagher threw the first stone, describing Parklife as "Southern England personified" in a manner that suggested it wasn't exactly complimentary. And according to his manager Alan McGee, Definitely Maybe cut "Digsy's Dinner" was written as a deliberate "piss-take of Blur."

An increasingly bitter war of words then broke out in the summer of 1995 as the "Country House" versus "Roll With It" war swept the nation. Blur emerged victorious, although Oasis had the last laugh when (What's The Story) Morning Glory spent 10 weeks atop the UK album chart.

It Brought Storytelling Back To Indie Pop

Heavily inspired by Martin Amis novel London Fields, Parklife was inhabited by a cast of intriguing fictional characters, essentially doubling up as a series of short stories. "Tracy Jacks," for example, is about a golf-obsessed civil servant who ends up getting arrested for public indecency before bulldozing his own house.

"Magic America" is the tale of Bill Barret, a Brit who commits to a life of excess during a Stateside holiday ("Took a cab to the shopping malls/ Bought and ate until he could do neither anymore"), while "Clover Over Dover" explores the mindset of a manipulative boyfriend threatening to jumping off the titular white cliffs.

Over the following 18 months, everything from Pulp's "Common People" and Space's "Neighbourhood" to Supergrass' "Caught by the Fuzz" and The Boo Radleys' "It's Lulu" were combining classic British guitar pop with witty Mike Leigh-esque vignettes of modern life.

It Originated The Big Indie Ballad

Dramatic ballads aren't necessarily the first thing that come to mind with Parklife, a record famed for its jaunty, "knees-up Mother Brown" ditties. But it boasts two examples: "To The End," an alternate Bond theme featuring a burst of Gallic flair from Stereolab's Laetitia Sadler, and the swoonsome "This Is A Low." Turns out the "mystical lager-eater" the record was designed to embody could also get a little vulnerable from time to time.

This appeared to give all of their laddish peers some pause for thought. Oasis, the most fervent advocates of the "cigarettes and alcohol" lifestyle, later scored their biggest hit with acoustic ballad "Wonderwall." And bands including Cast ("Walkaway"), Shed Seven ("Chasing Rainbows") and Menswear ("Being Brave") all enjoyed UK hits revealing their softer sides. No doubt Coldplay, Travis, and every other sensitive post-Britpop outfit that emerged in the late 1990s were taking notes, too.

It Paid Respect To The Greats

The Britpop scene was renowned for its slavish devotion to the first time British guitar bands ruled the airwaves, the Swinging Sixties. Oasis freely admitted they modeled themselves on the Beatles, while the likes of Ocean Colour Scene, Kula Shaker and The Paul Weller all released albums that sounded like they'd been discovered in a vintage record shop.

And while Blur would later distance themselves from the past with a sense of invention (which Albarn would also parlay into his various side projects, including the virtual band Gorillaz), they were more than happy to get all nostalgic on Parklife. See "Far Out," their only track to feature James on lead vocal, which resembled the trippy psychedelia of Pink Floyd in their Syd Barrett era, and the Sgt. Pepper-esque brassy instrumental "The Debt Collector," while there are also echoes of the Walker Brothers, The Kinks, and Small Faces. Suddenly, retro was the new cool.

It Turned Blur Into Britain's Biggest Guitar Band

The UK Top 10 success of 1991's "There's No Other Way" proved to be something of a false start for Blur, with the band soon falling by the wayside like every other baggy pop outfit that emerged at the turn of the decade. "Popscene," the 1992 single intended to revolutionize both their career and British guitar music in general, stalled at No. 32, while 1993 sophomore Modern Life is Rubbish sold just 40,000 copies.

But Parklife single-handedly turned Blur into Britain's biggest guitar band, reaching No. 1 in their homeland, spending 82 weeks in the Top 40, and eventually becoming a million-seller. It went on to pick up four BRITs, a Mercury Prize nomination, and has been recognized as an all-time great by Spin, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone. Further proof of its glowing reputation came in 2009 when Royal Mail selected it as one of 10 albums worthy of commemorating on a postage stamp.

It Spawned A String Of Classic Singles

Parklife's campaign was kicked off in March 1994 with "Girls and Boys," a glorious dissection of British vacationers — which, surprisingly in the days when genre-hopping was frowned upon — evoked the '80s synth-pop of Duran Duran and Pet Shop Boys. Rowntree was even replaced by a drum machine, not that he particularly minded, luckily.

This indie floorfiller was followed up by the hugely underrated "To The End" and then the much-quoted title track. Everything about "Parklife" the song is larger than life: the Cockney geezer narration from Quadrophenia's Phil Daniels, the festival-friendly sing-along chorus, and the brightly colored video in which James — perhaps tipping his hat to Queen's "I Want to Break Free" -– donned soap opera drag. But fourth release "End of a Century," a melancholic tale of domestic drudgery complete with mournful trombone solo, once again proved there was a depth beyond their cheeky chappy personas.

It Made Brits Proud To Be British Again

Unable to connect with the oppressive angst and flannel shirts of the grunge movement that had plagued their first major North American tour in 1992, Blur first started to embrace their inherent Englishness on the following year's Modern Life is Rubbish. Unfortunately, this throwback to the original British Invasion was met with a resounding shrug of the shoulders on both sides of the Atlantic.

Undeterred, however, the band doubled down on all things Anglocentric on its follow-up, from its original title of London, to its greyhound racing cover art, to its celebrations of bank holidays, Club 18-30 holidays, and shipping forecasts. This time around, they managed to capture the zeitgeist (at home, at least), as the rise of New Labour and the forthcoming hosting of Euro '96 made everyone proud to be British again. Within 12 months, the UK charts were littered with homegrown guitar bands selling the idea of the English dream — and it all started with Parklife.

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"...and you're watching Disney Channel!" For anyone who grew up in the 2000s, those five words likely trigger some pretty vivid imagery: a glowing neon wand, an outline of Mickey Mouse's ears, and every Disney star from Hilary Duff to the Jonas Brothers. 

Nearly 20 years later, many of those child stars remain instantly recognizable — and often mononymous — to the millions of fans who grew up with them: Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. Nick, Kevin and Joe. 

Each of those names has equally memorable music attached to it — tunes that often wrap any given millennial in a blanket of nostalgia for a time that was, for better or for worse, "So Yesterday." And all of those hits, and the careers that go with them, have the same starting point in Hollywood Records, Disney Music Group's pop-oriented record label.

This time in Disney's history — the core of which can be traced from roughly 2003 to 2010 — was impactful on multiple fronts. With its music-oriented programming and multi-platform marketing strategies, the network launched a procession of teen idols whose music would come to define the soundtrack to millennials' lives, simultaneously breaking records with its Disney Channel Original Movies, TV shows and soundtracks.

Now, two decades later, Disney Music Group launched the Disney 2000s campaign, honoring the pivotal, star-making era that gave fans a generation of unforgettable pop music. The campaign will last through August and lead directly into D23 2024: The Ultimate Fan Event with special vinyl releases of landmark LPs and nostalgic social media activations occurring all summer long. April's campaign activation was Disney 2000s Weekend at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, which featured special screenings of 2008's Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert and 2009's Hannah Montana: The Movie and Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.

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But before Miley and the JoBros, Hollywood Records' formula for creating relatable (and bankable) teen pop stars began with just one name: Hilary Duff. At the time, the bubbly blonde girl next door was essentially the face of the network thanks to her starring role in "Lizzie McGuire," and she'd just made the leap to the big screen in the summer of 2003 with The Lizzie McGuire Movie. In her years with Disney, Duff had dabbled in recording songs for Radio Disney, and even released a Christmas album under Buena Vista Records. However, her first album with Hollywood Records had the potential to catapult her from charming tween ingénue to bonafide teen pop star — and that's exactly what it did.

Released on August 26, 2003, Duff's Metamorphosis sold more than 200,000 copies in its first week and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The following week, the bubblegum studio set performed the rare feat of rising from No. 2 to No. 1, making the then-16-year-old Duff the first solo artist under 18 to earn a No. 1 album since Britney Spears.

The album's immediate success was no fluke: Within a matter of months, Metamorphosis had sold 2.6 million copies. Music videos for its radio-friendly singles "So Yesterday" and "Come Clean" received constant airplay between programming on the Disney Channel. (The latter was eventually licensed as the theme song for MTV's pioneering teen reality series "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," giving it an additional boost as a cultural touchstone of the early '00s.) A 33-date North American tour soon followed, and Hollywood Records officially had a sensation on their hands. 

Naturally, the label went to work replicating Duff's recipe for success, and even looked outside the pool of Disney Channel stars to develop new talent. Another early signee was Jesse McCartney. With a soulful croon and blonde mop, the former Dream Street member notched the label another big win with his 2004 breakout hit "Beautiful Soul."

"When 'Beautiful Soul' became the label's first No. 1 hit at radio, I think that's when they really knew they had something," McCartney tells GRAMMY.com. "Miley [Cyrus] and the Jonas Brothers were signed shortly after that success and the rest is history.

"The thing that Disney really excelled at was using the synergy of the channel with promoting songs at pop," he continues. "I did appearances on 'Hannah Montana' and 'The Suite Life of Zack & Cody' and my music videos were pushed to Disney Channel. The marketing was incredibly brilliant and I don't think there has been anything as connected with an entire generation like that since then."

By 2006, Disney had nearly perfected its synergistic formula, continually launching wildly popular tentpole franchises like High School Musical and The Cheetah Girls, and then giving stars like Vanessa Hudgens and Corbin Bleu recording contracts of their own. (Curiously, the pair's HSM co-star Ashley Tisdale was never signed to Hollywood Records, instead releasing her first two solo albums with Warner.) 

Aly Michalka showed off her vocal chops as sunny girl next door Keely Teslow on "Phil of the Future," and fans could find her off-screen as one half of sibling duo Aly & AJ. In between their 2005 debut album Into the Rush and its electro-pop-charged follow-up, 2007's Insomniatic, Aly and her equally talented younger sister, AJ, also headlined their own Disney Channel Original Movie, Cow Belles. (Duff also helped trailblaze this strategy with her own early DCOM, the ever-charming Cadet Kelly, in 2002, while she was simultaneously starring in "Lizzie McGuire.")

Even after years of proven success, the next class of stars became Disney's biggest and brightest, with Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and the Jonas Brothers all joining the network — and record label — around the same time. "Hannah Montana" found Cyrus playing a spunky middle schooler by day and world-famous pop star by night, and the network leveraged the sitcom's conceit to give the Tennessee native (and daughter of '90s country heartthrob Billy Ray Cyrus) the best of both worlds. 

After establishing Hannah as a persona, the series' sophomore soundtrack introduced Miley as a pop star in her own right thanks to a clever double album that was one-half Hannah's music and one-half Miley's. It's literally there in the title: Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus.

From there, Cyrus' stardom took off like a rocket as she scored back-to-back No.1 albums and a parade of Top 10 hits like "See You Again," "7 Things," "The Climb," "Can't Be Tamed," and the ever-so-timeless anthem "Party in the U.S.A."

At the same time, Gomez had top billing on her own Disney Channel series, the magical (but less musical) "Wizards of Waverly Place." That hardly stopped her from launching her own music career, though, first by fronting Selena Gomez & the Scene from 2008 to 2012, then eventually going solo with the release of 2013's Stars Dance after the "Wizards" finale aired.

For her part, Lovato — Gomez's childhood bestie and "Barney & Friends" costar — got her big break playing Mitchie Torres in Camp Rock alongside the Jonas Brothers as fictional boy band Connect 3, led by Joe Jonas as the swaggering and floppy-haired Shane Gray. Much like Duff had five years prior in the wake of The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Lovato released her debut solo album, 2008's Don't Forget, just three months after her DCOM broke records for the Disney Channel. 

Building off their chemistry from the movie musical, nearly the entirety of Don't Forget was co-written with the Jonas Brothers, who released two of their own albums on Hollywood Records — 2007's Jonas Brothers and 2008's A Little Bit Longer — before getting their own short-lived, goofily meta Disney series, "Jonas," which wrapped weeks after the inevitable Camp Rock sequel arrived in September 2010.

As the 2000s gave way to the 2010s, the Disney machine began slowing down as its cavalcade of stars graduated to more grown-up acting roles, music and careers. But from Duff's Metamorphosis through Lovato's 2017 LP, Tell Me You Love Me, Hollywood Records caught lightning in a bottle again and again and again, giving millennials an entire generation of talent that has carried them through adulthood and into the 2020s.

To commemorate the Disney 2000s campaign, GRAMMY.com crafted a playlist to look back on Disney's golden age of pop with favorite tracks from Hilary Duff, Vanessa Hudgens, the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus and more. Listen and reminisce below.