Concert Reviews
Disney’s latest franchises cast a spell on their young (sold-out) audience during the concert tour’s Boston stop.
Disney Descendants/Zombies: Worlds Collide Tour at TD Garden, Monday, Aug. 25.
The Disney Channel’s Descendants and Zombies movie franchises might not have the omnipresent cultural footprint that their most obvious antecedent, High School Musical, once did — unlike that behemoth, it’s entirely possible to be completely unaware of them if you’re not a parent — but ignore them at your peril.
Both series — the former tosses the children of classic Disney characters like Belle and Maleficent into boarding school together, and the latter spins aggressively G-rated versions of B-movie monsters such as zombies, werewolves, aliens and vampires into allegories for tolerance — are four movies deep, and with Monday’s TD Garden stop on the Descendants/Zombies: Worlds Collide Tour, it was clear that they’re not going away any time soon.
Part of that came from the sold-out audience; the movies’ fans are intensely devoted, and also children. The combination of the two resulted in an energy in the arena that was immense in ways that far surpassed that of most concerts for grownups, who typically have far too much dignity to lose their minds and voices with such abandon. (Kudos and sympathies to Zombies 4 star Malachi Barton, the overwhelming favorite heartthrob of the night.) The seven principal performers hailed exclusively from the latest iterations of their respective casts, without any of the people who made the franchises what they are, and the crowd still hung on them as if they’d been watching them for years.
Crucially, every one of them was there to perform as themselves, not as their characters. The latter probably would have been fun, but it would have made the show into theatre when it was far more interested in being a concert. It also meant that the lack of original cast members wasn’t a problem; Barton and Freya Skye made the sweet and buoyant duet “Someday” their own, and Malia Baker and Mekonnen Knife made a meal out of the New Jack Swing beats and “Rhythm Nation” choreography of “Good To Be Bad,” despite both songs coming from movies that they weren’t even in. And neither Barton, Knife nor Joshua Colley were on board when “Did I Mention” made its appearance in Descendants 3 — it’s not even Barton’s series, full stop — but that didn’t stop them from essentially becoming Bruno Mars-as-boy band and pulling off the song’s joyful bounce with ease.
On television, those sorts of songs can sound corny as they’re shoehorned into the context of the movie, but in an arena, they became viable big-ticket pop music. The full-cast opener “Worlds Collide” echoed the cavernous whomp of Taylor Swift’s “Ready For It” while it was just the girls onstage, and then added a hefty dose of Fall Out Boy when the boys made their entrance midway through. Skye and Barton’s “Don’t Mess With Us” recalled Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” and Baker’s acoustic guitar on “If Only” (the only visible instrumentation of the entire night) helped shape a yearning sway akin to Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway.”
The frothy candy pop of “Life Is Sweeter,” meanwhile, began with a wall of hot pink feather fans that were removed to reveal Skye perched atop a cupcake throne, a display, and song, worthy of Sabrina Carpenter in a less-explicit mode. It served as a reminder that the audience might have been seeing an advance glimpse of the future. Carpenter, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Olivia Rodrigo, Selena Gomez, Christina Aguilera, Demi Lovato, and the Jonas Brothers are just some of the major pop stars who have come from the Disney Channel ecosystem, and Descendants has already landed one of its stars in the Top 20 with Dove Cameron’s “Boyfriend.”
To that end, four of the performers got solo spotlights that went beyond Descendants and Zombies material. Colley’s self-written “I’m Gonna Remember This” was heartfelt, if over-earnest, Dara Reneé’s rap-sung “Imma Do It” was clattering and energetic, and it wasn’t hard to imagine hearing Skye’s “Gold’s Gone” on the radio between Swift and Carpenter, the song’s two guiding lights. Kylie Cantrall, meanwhile, got an extended mini-set, though her own songs made less of an impression than movie songs like the drum-heavy boom of “Red” (where she was full-on serving) and the slippier trap beats of “Love Ain’t It,” where she nailed the sound of someone walling off her own heart.
If any or even all of it was derivative of other pop artists, it hardly mattered, both because of the energy and technical polish of the performances (tempered with just enough shaggy humanness to avoid seeming robotic) and because of the substantial number of attendees who were experiencing their very first concert. To them, all of it was new, and all of it was exciting. For those with a little more mileage on the odometer, the excitement, vicarious or not, would have to suffice.
Setlist for Descendants/Zombies: Worlds Collide Tour at TD Garden, Aug. 25, 2025
- Worlds Collide (Cast)
- Red (Kylie Cantrall)
- The Place To Be (Freya Skye and Malachi Barton)
- Fired Up (Malachi Barton, Joshua Colley and Mekonnen Knife)
- Did I Mention (Malachi Barton, Joshua Colley and Mekonnen Knife)
- Rotten To The Core (Kylie Cantrall, Malia Baker, Joshua Colley and Malachi Barton)
- Bamm (Zombie Block Party) (Mekonnen Knife and Freya Skye)
- What’s My Name (Dara Reneé and Joshua Colley)
- Life Is Sweeter (Freya Skye)
- Like The Zombies Do (Cast)
- Someday (Freya Skye and Malachi Barton)
- Dream Come True (Freya Skye and Malachi Barton)
- Good to Be Bad (Malia Baker and Mekonnen Knife)
- Love Ain’t It (Kylie Cantrall)
- Flesh and Bone (Cast)
- Imma Do It (Dara Reneé)
- See You Tonight (Kylie Cantrall)
- Boy For A Day (Kylie Cantrall)
- Denim (Kylie Cantrall)
- Goodie Bag (Kylie Cantrall)
INTERMISSION
- Gold’s Gone (Freya Skye)
- We Own The Night/Call To The Wild (Dara Reneé, Joshua Colley and Mekonnen Knife)
- Don’t Mess With Us (Freya Skye and Malachi Barton)
- Ways To Be Wicked (Kylie Cantrall, Joshua Colley, Malia Baker and Mekonnen Knife)
- Queen of Mean (Dara Reneé)
- Alien Invasion (Cast)
- If Only (Malia Baker)
- Space Between (Kylie Cantrall and Malia Baker)
- Night Falls (Cast)
- My Own Way (Freya Skye)
- Shuffle of Love (Malachi Barton, Joshua Colley and Mekonnen Knife)
- I’m Gonna Remember This (Joshua Colley)
- Legends In The Making (Cast)
- Set It Off (Cast)
Marc Hirsh can be reached at [email protected] or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social.
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