2000s tween pop is back. (Thank you Disney Channel and Nickelodeon Nostalgia.)

It’s a Friday night in 2006. Bagel Bites are thawed in the oven and cases of Capri Sands are chilled in the refrigerator. You turn on the TV in your living room, click on the Disney Channel, and get ready to sing both Troy and Gabriella’s parts in “Breaking Free” from “High School Musical.”

The year is 2023. The living room turns into a bar, the Capri Sans turns into a gin and tonic, and you’re on the dance floor singing “That’s So Raven” along with dozens of other girlfriends in their 20s and 30s. Theme song.

“I love the Disney Channel. It’s so nostalgic,” Leslie Epps, 25, said at a recent party inspired by 2000s tween culture at Manhattan concert venue Webster Hall. “We want to enjoy our youth in a way, and this is a way to do that. It’s like a school dance for adults.”

For many adults, the 20-something pop artists of the 2000s represent a less complicated time of childhood innocence: Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers, Ailey & AJ, the Cheetah Girls, and Selena Gomez on Disney Channel’s 24-hour show. It represents the era when it was ruled by , while Nickelodeon was dominated by iCarly and Big Time Rush. Youth in the 2000s lived in a pre-streaming world where pop culture catered to the needs of the youth market in ways never seen before.

Lately, nostalgia for that era has manifested itself in the form of random DJ requests, tribute shows, and themed parties at clubs.

“You’d be surprised how many times I’m asked to play the Jonas Brothers, especially ‘Burnin’ Up,’ at weddings,” says Chris, a full-time DJ and provider of live music and events. said Malcolm Alexander, owner of Blink Entertainment. A company based in Long Beach, California.

But that wasn’t necessarily the case five or even 10 years ago, when Mr. Alexander was asked to play NSync and Paula Abdul songs rather than Hannah Montana. He believes the popularity of streaming platforms like Disney+ and Netflix has reinvigorated interest in ’80s pop. He now sneaks winking references to that culture into his mixes.

“We’ll be playing nostalgic Europop, like Daft Punk and Cher’s ‘Believe’. You’ll see girls dancing,” said Alexander, 30. “I think if I mix Hilary Duff’s ‘What Dreams Are Made Of,’ it’s going to work. And sure enough, it does.”

Duff, who starred in episode 65 of the Disney Channel hit “Lizzie McGuire,” was also the muse at a benefit concert organized by Atlanta singer Nadia Verr to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Duff’s album “Metamorphosis.” there were. In August, Verr and several local musicians played the album in its entirety at a local coffee shop to raise money for Y’all Rock Camp ATL, a nonprofit that provides music lessons to young musicians.

“My first concert was with Hilary Duff when I was 13,” Vahe, now 32, recalls. “On the occasion of this album’s 20th anniversary, I found myself wandering down the Disney rabbit hole and revisiting everything. It’s crazy how many songs are embedded in my brain. .”

For her performance, Ms. Ver donned a blonde wig, low-rise denim jeans, a pink and orange mesh top, and orange chunky heeled sandals as the Disney Channel star.

“Music now is more of a fleeting moment than a lifestyle,” she said. “When we were kids, we would go through Cheetah Girls and Hilary just to get through the day.”

The 2000s tween music movement moved beyond childhood bedrooms, lavish weddings, and coffee shops and into clubs and theaters across the country.

Actor and DJ Matt Bennett has been touring clubs and theaters intermittently since 2019 with his popular Party 101 event. Before playing his Cheetah Girls mixes from his laptop, Robbie played Shapiro on his fourth season of the Nickelodeon sitcom Victorious, which debuted in 2010.

Bennett, 31, said she started throwing parties to celebrate everything in 2019 after a DJ played Duff’s “Come Clean” during a night out in Los Angeles, and “the place exploded.” Told. ”

Not long after that experience, he began creating mashups utilizing songs from The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003) to his Victorious era.

“Everyone is now getting an independent stream of content on TikTok or Instagram,” Bennett said. The particular monoculture that began in the early 2000s was “the last time when everyone was still watching TV and being fed the same thing, and this music was part of that.”

According to Tyler Bickford, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in children’s literature and studies, there was an “arms race” toward the end of the last century, during which child consumers and media companies were forced to take responsibility for their own failures. He says he has come to believe that it is. They’ll die to keep the 9- to 12-year-old demographic in check.

“This era was about the importance of children, both as performers and consumers, in mainstream popular culture,” he said.

According to Professor Bickford, whose research examines the rise of the tween music industry from its childish roots to justifying children’s participation in public culture, pop music has helped these companies grow young. The company says it has begun to penetrate consumers.

“This brief moment kind of normalized pop music for children,” Professor Bickford said.

Mr. Bennett’s Party 101 — whose name is a reference to another Nickelodeon series, “Zoey 101” — is currently touring the United States. During recent stops in New York, Atlanta and Boise, he brought his “Victorious” castmates Avan Jogia, Elizabeth Gillies and Daniella Monet on stage.

For the show, Bennett mixes and match audible nostalgia, including Disney Channel original movie songs and Nickelodeon theme songs. The nearly two-hour mashup set comes with an onstage video screen featuring clips from popular shows as well as commercials from Disney’s Channel at the time.

Whitney Nicole, 24, decided to head to New York for last month’s show at Webster Hall after failing to secure tickets for a sold-out show in Cleveland, where she lives.

Nicole, who was wearing a Big Time Rush T-shirt, said, “There were no major problems at the time, and it was like a stress-free time in my life.” The band began life as a fictional appearance on the Nickelodeon show of the same name, 40 Concerts. “So every time I hear that music, I feel like I forget that I’m an adult.”

“My friends and I still drive around town with this music playing,” said Daniel Ventura, 26, another participant. “Our go-to cry song is ‘Butterflies Fly Away’ from the Hannah Montana movie.”

For Bennett, Party 101 is about more than just letting your guard down and forgetting your adult responsibilities.

“Culturally, there’s a lot of joy in this and there’s a lot of joy that people seem to be getting out of it, especially in post-pandemic lockdown,” he said. “Anyone can copy this. It doesn’t have to be on a large scale.”

Among all the singalongs featured on this super-special playlist and the squeals of excitement they generated, one ballad from the 2008 Disney Channel original movie Camp Rock is “This Is”. · Me” seemed to capture the emotion and energy of Webster Hall’s performance. .

People who take part in self-empowerment lyrics (“Now I’ve found who I am, there’s no way to suppress it, I don’t have to hide who I want to be anymore, this is who I am”) and sing it to their friends. Some people projected their own voices. We all headed to the main stage and enjoyed a night where the reality of adulthood felt a little far away.