5 Best ‘Wicked’ Songs, Ranked From Good to Amazing

Movies, Audio // 3.5 min read

These magical song-and-dance numbers from the hit musical film will cast a spell over you.

The magical songs of the stage musical Wicked have been enchanting fans for over 20 years. Now, thanks to the recent blockbuster movie, which adapts the musical’s first half for the big screen, new fans are discovering and falling in love with those numbers. Wicked, which stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, contains 11 songs, and each one serves a specific purpose in establishing important information about a character’s emotions or their respective journeys. There are no bad songs here, but some are more memorable than the rest. So, here is our ranking of the songs in the movie.

5) No One Mourns the Wicked

The movie’s majestic and operatic opening number sees Glinda float into Munchkinland in her pink bubble. As the Munchkins celebrate the apparent death of the Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda regales them with the tale of how she was once friends with said witch, who was not always evil. Grande ends the number with an E6 — a stratospherically high note (also called a whistle note) that’s extremely hard for singers, even talented ones, to hit.

The Munchkinland set features a real field of nine million tulips planted at Belmont Nurseries, near the town of King’s Lynn in Norfolk, England. The fields will be open to the public around April and May each year

4) What Is This Feeling

One of the most entertaining numbers in the movie establishes the rivalry between Elphaba and Glinda in particularly unsubtle terms. Pfannee (Bowen Yang) and ShenShen (Bronwyn James), Glinda’s sycophantic friends, lead a group of students who empathise with Glinda’s plight of putting up with Elphaba.

The movie elevates “What Is This Feeling” into a standout number thanks in part to its choreography, which quickly went viral on social media with many people re-enacting it.

Choreographer Christopher Scott explains the rationale behind the dance, telling Offscreen Central: “What do you do if you’re a kid at university, and you’re stressed out all the time? That’s why when they shrug their shoulders, it’s not a dance move; it’s a feeling they have … So when they slap the books, it’s rhythmic, but I didn’t create it to be rhythmic. I created it to be like, they just can’t control [it], and they’re just so frustrated.” Gives new meaning to the phrase “hitting the books”.

3) Dancing Through Life

In the stage musical, “Dancing Through Life” takes place in the Shiz courtyard, but the movie relocates the number to the university’s ornate library — or the “book place”, as Glinda puts it. Production designer Nathan Crowley (who won an Oscar for Wicked) creates circular rotating bookshelves, which are meant to evoke the tornado that brings Dorothy to Oz in The Wizard of Oz. In a clever bit of visual invention, the ladders across the diameter of the bookshelves form the letters ‘O’ and ‘Z’ as the shelves rotate. Dancers perform acrobatic feats, swinging from the ladders and through the shelves.

In addition to being one of the most complicated set pieces in the film, “Dancing Through Life” is a showcase for the scene-stealing, heart-melting, swoon-inducing Jonathan Bailey.

“He creates chaos around him, like he does in that song, because he’s got to match the chaos that’s going on inside,” Bailey tells W Magazine about Fiyero. While the character seems defined by his cool superficiality, Bailey wanted to show there was more going on beneath the surface. “He’s deeply unnerved by stillness and adhering to rules and structure … When you see someone causing that sort of disturbance, it’s usually because they’ve never felt seen,” the actor muses. Bailey cites Fred Astaire, John Travolta, and Patrick Swayze as influences, and he dances his way into the pantheon of fleet-footed leading men.

2) Popular

In this scene, the initial frostiness between the two protagonists begins to melt as Glinda attempts to work her magic on Elphaba, offering the latter a makeover. The sequence sees Ariana Grande in full-on physical comedian mode, sporting a frilly pink peignoir fashioned by Paul Tazewell (who won a Best Costume Design Oscar), swinging from the chandelier and prancing around the dorm room to her heart’s delight. The song features some of Schwartz’s finest wordplay, including the lines “don’t be offended by my frank analysis / Think of it as personality dialysis / Now that I’ve chosen to become a / Pal, a sister, and advisor / There’s nobody wiser!”

The number also includes one of the movie’s many nods to the original Wizard of Oz movie: Glinda takes a pair of ruby slippers and knocks them together three times.

1) Defying Gravity

The musical’s signature song happens during the climax of Act 1 (which is where the Wicked movie ends; Wicked: For Good, set to release this year, will cover Act 2). The movie turns “Defying Gravity” into a complicated set piece, incorporating the Wizard’s hot air balloon into the action. While some fans of the stage musical dislike that the song is broken up more in the movie, interrupting its flow with action, it arguably fits the film medium better.

Chu calls staging “Defying Gravity” “the nightmare of [his] life”, agonising over how much to change and how to adapt the sequence for the screen, knowing die-hard fans would scrutinise it. “This is much bigger than just a song,” Chu tells Variety. “This is about the ending of a movie and [the] journey of a character that we’ve invested … so much [in].”

In the process of embodying Elphaba, Erivo took on the challenge of singing live while performing stunts, including falling and flying on the broomstick gimbal rig as wind machines were blasting at her.

“She’s just a powerhouse, doing every single one of those stunts and singing live,” cinematographer Brooks says. “She’s on this big crazy ride around our sound stage, yet she’s singing live and in character. I don’t know how she did it.”

A powerful moment of self-actualisation for Elphaba, “Defying Gravity” sends audiences out on a high, creating a tornado of anticipation for the follow-up act.

Here’s the full track listing (11 songs) of the Wicked soundtrack and their themes/narrative purpose:

No One Mourns the Wicked

In this opening number, Glinda arrives in Munchkinland in her bubble and regales the Munchkins with the tale of how she and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, were friends in school, setting the scene for the rest of the story.

Dear Old Shiz

This is the anthem of Shiz University, where Glinda and Elphaba are enrolled.

The Wizard and I

Elphaba sings about her dream of meeting the Wizard, hoping that he can grant her wishes.

What Is This Feeling?

Glinda and Elphaba express their mutual loathing for each other after they’re made to be roommates at Shiz.

Something Bad

Dr Dillamond the goat (Peter Dinklage), a professor at Shiz, tells Elphaba about the conspiracy to silence the animals of Oz.

Dancing Through Life

Fiyero, a transfer student from Winkie Country, makes his splashy entrance at Shiz, advocating for a carefree existence.

Popular

Glinda offers Elphaba a makeover as the two gradually become friends after starting out disliking each other.

I’m Not That Girl

Elphaba sings wistfully about apparently being rejected by Fiyero in favour of Glinda.

One Short Day

Elphaba and Glinda arrive in the Emerald City by train and are enchanted by all this magical place has to offer.

A Sentimental Man

The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) presents himself to Elphaba and Glinda as a benevolent figure, but all is not as it seems.

Defying Gravity

After Elphaba refuses to comply with the Wizard, she is hunted down by the palace guards and flies off on her broomstick, leaving Glinda conflicted.

Enjoy Wicked and the soundtrack of the Broadway production on KrisWorld.

Audio Listing

Wicked (15th Anniversary Special Edition)

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