Ariana Grande‘s big number in Wicked is “Popular,” and according to the composer of the Wicked musical, she pushed back when he tried to change it.
Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the music and lyrics for the Wicked musical, tells the Los Angeles Times, “In the spirit of being open to new things for the movie, my music team and I thought, let’s refresh the rhythm. Let’s, maybe, I don’t know, hip-hop it up a little bit.”
But, Schwartz notes, “Ariana said, ‘Absolutely not, don’t do it. I want to be Glinda, not Ariana Grande playing Glinda.’”
One thing she did let him change, he says, is the vocal ending to “Popular.”
“Ariana was a little hesitant about it, but I told her that if I had thought of it for the original show, this is how it would have been,” he explains. “Once she was reassured that this new bit of music was coming out of character, she was on board.”
Changes or not, people seem to love the new Wicked soundtrack: Amazon Music says that within 24 hours of its release, it became the most-streamed musical soundtrack globally on the platform.
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