“Everybody’s touring right now,” says Disney Music Group president Ken Bunt. “So it became evident.”
In early March, Hilary Duff appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, teaching the host the widely memed and now-viral choreography to her 2007 hit “With Love.” The bouncy pop track served as the second single off her album Dignity, which would be the former Lizzie McGuire star’s final release on the Disney-owned Hollywood Records, which helped distribute an entire class of pop superstars.
A few weeks later, another Disney icon was making headlines: Miley Cyrus had reembraced Hannah Montana (even cutting her bangs and going blonde, with the help of some clip-ins) to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary. To commemorate the titular role that ultimately launched Cyrus into superstardom, she co-produced an hourlong Disney+ special, threw a Hollywood premiere party and released a new, reflective song, “Younger You,” that was released not by current label Columbia but by first musical home Hollywood Records.
Following the special’s premiere, Hannah Montana’s catalog had a 306% streaming gain (to 18.8 million official on-demand U.S. streams in the seven-day period after the special hit Hulu and Disney+, compared with the 4.6 million streams in the seven-day period before), according to Luminate. Meanwhile, “Younger You” debuted with 1.1 million official on-demand streams on its first day of release (March 27).
Disney Music Group president Ken Bunt says “it’s really been the last few years” that he’s noticed the eagerness of Disney’s veteran class of pop stars to revisit their start, after they moved to new label homes for mature projects. “Really, I think it started to coalesce last year with the Jonas Brothers tour. And then, of course, we have the catalog, so we’ve been working with Hilary’s team well before [her new album and tour] was announced. They came to us saying, ‘Hey, can we work together?’ Aly & AJ’s team [also] reached out. Everybody’s touring right now … So it became evident.”
In June, Duff will embark on her first global headlining tour in nearly two decades — which includes dates at Madison Square Garden in New York and the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. A small run of intimate shows in January previewed that her early hits would be just as essential to the setlist as her new album, luck… or something, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in March. (She even closed the shows with her signature Lizzie McGuire Movie soundtrack standout, “What Dreams Are Made Of,” and in April released “Come Clean [Mine],” a new recording of her 2004 single.)
Demi Lovato, who starred in Camp Rock (and its sequel) and released six albums on Hollywood Records, is also hitting the road this year, embarking on the It’s Not That Deep tour following her October 2025 album of the same name, which debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200. And this summer, Camp Rock 3 will arrive, which Lovato is co-executive producing (alongside former co-stars/co-producers the Jonas Brothers). Selena Gomez is also stepping behind the camera, making her directorial debut in the coming months with the season three premiere of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place (this season will be its last).
Bunt is especially proud that as this class has matured both personally and professionally, Disney can still be considered home — a place to not only return to for nostalgia but also a safe launchpad to try something new. He mentions Cyrus’ Avatar: Fire and Ash end-credits song, “Dream as One,” or the fact that Gomez is a producer on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, in which she also stars (both are Disney properties). He even teases that Duff has “been doing more with the company” that could be “coming out soon” — and has also been discussing the idea of getting “all [those original stars] on screen … to have them tell their story.”
It all points to another achievement that Bunt is proud of: how Disney Music Group has grown as well. “After all these years, I feel like there’s a way for talent to mature with the company,” he says. “In the past, we didn’t really have that. We were very focused on tween.” He cites Disney stars Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo as well for connecting some dots, noting that Rodrigo “is one of the few” who wrote a song for a Disney series in which she also starred (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series).
That’s not to say the company’s focus has shifted away from its key demographic. Rather, at the same time that this veteran class is embracing Disney’s new millennium heyday, Bunt is predicting that another class of superstars is currently developing across various Disney franchises, including The Descendants, Zombies and Camp Rock 3 — the casts of which are joining forces for a world tour this September. Meanwhile, after performing on 2025’s joint franchise tour, Kylie Cantrall of Descendants fame just signed with Republic Records, while Hollywood Records breakout Freya Skye released her debut EP, Stardust, in February, with single “Silent Treatment” becoming her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100.
While Bunt is excited about the “very talented” new era of Disney stars across music, movies and TV, he still sees the late-2000s class as singular. “This class is just unique in music history,” says Bunt, who has worked at Disney for 28 years and got his start on the video promotion and digital marketing teams as most of these stars were launching. “To have this level of talent still resonate culturally 20 years later, I can’t think of another class that’s really been like this from a historical standpoint. And to me, the thread that goes through all of them is yes, they’re talented, but they all have an incredible work ethic. They’ve really worked at their craft over all those years to still continue to have success.”
