Never mind the full-frontal JPEGs that leaked online last year—Vanessa Hudgens is still very much a Disney girl. On her second solo disc, she lavishes attention on boys, sings about dancing and never acknowledges, explicitly or even implicitly, the horizontal tango. This is teen pop in which any trace of innuendo has been eradicated: There is no genie in the bottle, no hormones straining against the schoolgirl outfit; the most subversive moment is “Sneakernight,” in which Hudgens throws a late-night dance party, bedtimes be damned. Rather than expose too much of herself, she plays dress-up, rifling through pop’s last few seasons. She strikes her poses like any musical-trained shape-shifter, testing out slicked-up R&B belting, crunchy love ballads, sassy old-school rap and Auto-Tuned dance pop. But it’s that handful of R&B tracks that really allows Hudgens to edge out of Disney’s squeaky-clean mold. Her voice was made to rip, and when she lets go just a little, the coyness turns sultry—proof that she might just have a life after high school.

Download “Sneakernight,” “Hook It Up”