Camp Rock 3 is set to premiere on August 13, 2026 at 8:00 p.m. ET. Disney Channel was forced to drop a full video snippet of the new version of ‘Play My Music‘ due to the widespread backlash toward the initial release of the debut single.
If those words not mean anything to you and you decide to stop reading right now, no hard feelings. As someone who typically focuses on college sports and artists and bands like Billy Strings, Marcus King, Mt. Joy and/or Sierra Ferrell, I am going completely rogue. It is super off-brand for a website called ‘BroBible’. I get it.
With that being said, I think it will hit home for some of you? Especially if you grew up (or are still growing up) watching Disney Channel movies on a hot August day right before back to school. Remember the Disney Channel Games? Those rocked.
Camp Rock 3 will premiere next week.
The original Camp Rock was first released on June 20, 2008. The cast featured Demi Lovato, Alyson Stoner and the Jonas Brothers. All of the music was composed by David Kitay, who also gets credit for Disney Channel movies like Cadet Kelly and Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off, as well as classics like Clueless, A Night at the Roxbury, Dude Where’s My Car, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, and Scary Movie.
A talented, but insecure singer attends a prestigious summer music camp she cannot afford because her mother was hired as the caterer. After hiding her identity, she finds friendship, falls in love and learns that being true to herself is more important than trying to fit in. Classic Disney plot.
Camp Rock 2 dropped two years later. Demi Lovato and her friends must fight against the big-money, state-of-the-art music camp that opens across the lake and puts the future of Camp Rock in jeopardy. Their final performance proves passion and community matters more than fame. Disney did it again!
It has been 16 years since the last Camp Rock movie. Even though my musical and cinematic tastes had already moved beyond the world of Disney Channel at that point in my life, I can remember rushing home to watch the second movie with my 8th grade girlfriend after football practice. (Feel old yet?) Nostalgia is very real and I will absolutely watch the new movie with my wife at some point before the shoulder pads and helmets start knocking on Saturdays.
Disney Channel had to release the full music video for ‘Play My Music.’
I only mention my wife in this discussion because she was the one who first put me on to the ongoing “controversy” with Camp Rock 3. I’m not so sure I would call it a controversy but I lack a better word. Let’s break it down.
If you have seen the first Camp Rock, you probably remember the song ‘Play My Music.’ It was performed by the Jo Bros as whatever their band name was in the movie and, if we’re being real here, it’s a banger.
I guess Disney Channel decided to bring ‘Play My Music’ back for Camp Rock 3. The official single dropped earlier this week.
The above snippet received more than 10 million impressions on social media. Fans, and haters, were astonished by just how awful it sounds. The mixing is off. The vocals are off. It lacks coherence and is genuinely hard to listen to.
There is a reason why it sounds so terrible without additional context. Disney Channel had to release the full music video to clear things up. It is some kind of mashed-up audition scene at a music summer camp. Every different artist has his/her/their own style, which makes it sound like a bad splice of different genres until it all comes together on the screen.
Don’t get me wrong. The autotune and lip-syncing is still terrible. Demi Lovato and the Jonas Brothers can really sing. This Camp Rock 3 version is sweetened way more than it should or needs to be.
I don’t quite understand why Disney would even release the mashup version as a single, because I don’t know who would listen to it on its own, but the song makes a lot more sense in context of the music video than with the audio by itself. No need to freak out.