Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
Take it from Fiyero: “Life is fraught-less when you’re thoughtless.” While the Wizard of Oz prequel tells a reasonably compelling story — albeit a much safer one than the Gregory Maguire novel the show is based on — Wicked fans are here to dance through the songs. There are 11 in the first act of the hit Broadway musical, so that’s exactly how many there are in Wicked. Wicked: For Good beefs up the stage show’s second-act song count with new numbers created just for the film.
All the familiar songs are there, from showstoppers like “Defying Gravity” and “No Good Deed” to songs you’d traditionally skip on the album like “Something Bad” and “A Sentimental Man.” As in his 2021 stage-to-screen adaptation of In the Heights, director Jon M. Chu shows real skill in putting together big production numbers, but he also has some tricks up his sleeve. Some of the Wicked movies’ best musical moments happen when Chu finds a new cinematic language to filter them through. At the same time, it’s easy for certain songs to get lost amid the scope and grandeur of a $300 million production.
It’s not exactly controversial to say there are highs and lows to Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked score. Identifying the best and worst musical numbers in the movies may seem obvious to anyone who knows the show. But to put together this ranking, I tried to look at the big picture, including the performances, the staging, the visuals, and, perhaps most important, how many times the song made me think, Okay, they ate that.
Look, Jeff Goldblum was not hired for his singing voice, which is basically fine. “A Sentimental Man” is barely a full number and is most notable for one of my favorite “You’re not gonna get away with this, Stephen Schwartz!” rhymes: “And helping you with your ascent allows me to feel so parental” (you have to sing “ascental” to make it work).
In the film, we do get the Wizard dancing around his neat little Oz model, and that’s fun. My biggest issue with “A Sentimental Man” is that Goldblum is too much of a character in his own right to ever let you fully believe him as the Wizard. In a song that calls for sincerity — or at least the performance of sincerity — his inherent Jeff Goldblum–ness becomes more glaring.
What can I say? Aside from giving Galinda a chance to show off her high notes — and you can never have too many of those moments, whether from Ariana Grande, Kristen Chenoweth, or any of the other soprano divas who’ve played the Good Witch over the years — there’s not a lot here. Even the introduction of Keala Settle’s Miss Coddle can’t do much to make “Dear Old Shiz” stand out. (No fault of Settle’s; it’s just not a “This Is Me” moment.) At the same time, everyone sounds great. Whether through the magic of live singing or the magic of postproduction, their voices meld beautifully.
There’s really no other place to rank “Dear Old Shiz” than near the bottom of the list, though the biggest mark against it isn’t the song so much as the way Elphaba’s arrival pulls focus.
The news that Schwartz would write two new songs for Wicked: For Good was greeted with cheers by Wicked fans, along with some healthy skepticism from those less enthused about the composer’s recent output. Unfortunately, “The Girl in the Bubble” is not likely to convince any naysayers. Grande sings it beautifully — that goes without saying, doesn’t it? — but she’s saddled with clunky lyrics like “The girl in the bubble, the pink shiny bubble, it’s time for her bubble to pop.” It’s enough to make you wince!
And look, not every lyric in Wicked the stage musical is top-tier; I will continue to side-eye wonky lines from much better songs throughout this list. The other problem with “The Girl in the Bubble” is that it’s completely superfluous — aside from qualifying as a potential Oscar nominee for Best Original Song, what does the new number do that hasn’t already been accomplished by “I’m Not That Girl (Reprise)”? Glinda’s bubble has burst! Worse, it brings the momentum from “No Good Deed” and “March of the Witch Hunters” screeching to a halt.
Perhaps the most infamous skip on the Original Broadway Cast Recording, “Something Bad” is better than expected in the Wicked movie. This is Doctor Dillamond’s big moment, and as many quibbles as I have with the CGI throughout both films — more on this shortly — I’ll concede they did a pretty good job transforming Peter Dinklage into the Goat. (He certainly looks better than Elphaba’s Bear nanny.) And Dinklage’s singing voice is pleasant if not exceptional. He’s at least up to the task of this number.
As for the scene itself, the Wicked movies do a lot of showing rather than telling, for better and for worse. In this case, the shadow-puppet depiction of the persecution of Animals in Oz is quite effective and distracts from some of the less impressive CGI creations in Dillamond’s salon. This is almost certainly the best “Something Bad” we were going to get.
Let’s start with the positive: It’s always nice to hear Ethan Slater sing. And while his performance in Wicked was mostly restricted to plaintive yearning for Galinda, Wicked: For Good frees him to show more range as the (spoiler alert) Tin Man. There’s excitement in watching him be riled up in his campaign against Elphaba, and the song has a strong, propulsive beat that flows nicely from “No Good Deed.”
On the whole, though, there’s nothing particularly interesting or memorable about “March of the Witch Hunters,” which requires Slater to get through a jumbled mouthful of lyrics. The Cowardly Lion’s nonsensical hatred toward Elphaba is explained in the especially tortured line “If she’d let him fight his own battles when he was young, he wouldn’t be a coward today!”
Wicked: For Good expands the musical’s Act Two opener in ways that give a sense of scope that you can’t achieve onstage. Showcasing Elphaba’s forest lair is a smart move, and the interpolation of motifs from “The Wizard and I” and “What Is This Feeling?” remind us of our own warm feelings toward the first movie ahead of a (sorry to say) significantly less successful sequel. Is it ideal that the first singing voice we hear is Michelle Yeoh’s? No. But as soon as Grande and Cynthia Erivo start singing, all is forgiven.
For the most part, at least. Like so many of the additions to both Wicked movies, “Every Day More Wicked” doesn’t feel particularly necessary. The new ending, which features the Ozians chanting “for good” is painfully on the nose — we already know what movie we’re watching! In its expanded form, it’s not a bad song, but it’s really just a prelude to “Thank Goodness/I Couldn’t Be Happier,” which has all the “Here’s what you missed between movies” exposition we need.
Photo: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
The other brand-new song written for Wicked: For Good, “No Place Like Home,” does at least add something to the story, expanding on the Animals’ exile from Oz and Elphaba’s resistance efforts. Because the stage musical is so focused on the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, we get very little of this — did you know there was an Underground Railroad analogue under the Yellow Brick Road? I certainly didn’t! “No Place Like Home,” borrowing its title from one of countless indelible Wizard of Oz lines, is Elphaba’s plea to the Animals to stand up and fight back instead of giving up and fleeing.
However noble its intentions — and however stunning Erivo’s voice — the song is simply not very good. It’s admirable that Wicked: For Good overtly links the Wizard’s persecution of scapegoated Animals in Oz to the treatment of marginalized communities in the U.S., with Elphaba singing, “Why do I love this place that’s never seemed to love me?” Beyond the obvious allusions, though, “No Place Like Home” has nothing to say. It’s all banal platitudes, a sort of Ozian fight song. Surely, we could have done better than “If we just keep fighting for it, we will win back and restore it.”
Photo: Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
Goldblum doesn’t sound bad singing “Wonderful,” his big Wicked: For Good number, though you may be too distracted by the incessant prop work to even notice. One of Chu’s adaptation strategies is a perpetual busyness that works better in some moments than in others. It’s pretty neutral here — Goldblum leans into the shtick, and because that’s what we expect at this point, it’s inoffensive.
The cheat of the movie version of “Wonderful,” which has always been a Wizard song with an Elphaba assist, is that it quickly turns into a Wizard-Glinda duet. If that’s not shameless enough, we even get a brief “Defying Gravity” reprise as Glinda once again tries to get Elphaba to work in tandem with her and the Wizard. Ultimately, I’m an easy mark, which means I will absolutely let the movie win me over with a few bars of a better song than “Wonderful” and a dance under rainbow lights. The song still isn’t making it anywhere near the top of my ranking, though.
Otherwise known as the song left off the Original Broadway Cast Recording for being too spoiler-y, “The Wicked Witch of the East” has always been a little ridiculous for the speed with which it forces Nessa to break bad. Look, when you need to shoehorn in the entirety of The Wizard of Oz, it’s only natural you might have to cut some corners, and to the movie’s credit, Wicked: For Good does attempt to flesh out Nessa a bit. (Boq tries to leave Munchkinland, and she speedily aligns with the fascists in power out of spite. Sure.) The movie also solves the show’s problem of Elphaba giving her wheelchair-user sister the power to walk by having Elphaba give her sister the power to float instead, which feels less ableist.
The major problem with the sequence — aside from the issues outlined above, all inherent to the source material — is that it undercuts Nessa’s big moment by focusing on Boq’s transformation. Her big declaration that she has become her sister’s equal, the Wicked Witch of the East, gets drowned out by the Tin Man’s groaning and clanking. It’s a frustrating decision that feels unfair to a character who is already underserved by this story.
Given the undeniable appeal of Erivo and Jonathan Bailey, “As Long As You’re Mine” might have been the most anticipated musical moment of Wicked: For Good — next to the title song, that is. So what went wrong here? Perhaps it’s the constraints of the PG rating, but there’s a bizarre lack of passion to a song in which Elphaba and Fiyero finally declare their feelings for each other and consummate their relationship. Onstage, they sing into each other’s eyes. In the film, Elphaba starts off singing while standing solo outside her forest lair. Who is she even talking to when she begs, “Kiss me too fiercely, hold me too tight”?
This is a movie for children, so it’s hard to fault the scene for not being sexier, but does Elphaba really need to undress only to put on a tasteful cardigan? (Fiyero at least gets to show a little chest hair.) That “As Long As You’re Mine” works at all is a testament to the song itself and the compelling screen presence of its performers. While the chemistry between them may fall flat, they each command attention on their own.
Despite containing another of my favorite “You’re not gonna get away with this, Stephen Schwartz!” lines (“She who’s winsome, she wins him”), “I’m Not That Girl” is not that girl in the Wicked movie. It’s well sung, obviously, and Erivo fares best in scenes where Elphaba is lovelorn and teary-eyed. But there’s an odd flatness to the number, and here’s where I blame the CGI fuzziness that makes the whole forest look artificial.
The song itself does a lot of the heavy lifting, so it’s hard to complain too much. You just wish Chu had found a way to really lean into the intimacy of the number instead of trying to create a visual moment Erivo gets lost in.
The pleasant surprise of the first Wicked is that it works more often than it doesn’t. With that in mind, we’ve reached the halfway point of this list, so now we’re dealing with numbers I am largely positive about! “No One Mourns the Wicked” is an encouraging opening for the film, emphasizing Chu’s ability to pull off big production numbers and the care put into creating impressive practical sets. Munchkinland looks great, borrowing just enough from the 1939 Wizard of Oz while feeling like its own thing.
My one complaint — aside from the aforementioned CGI Bear nanny in the flashback to Elphaba’s birth, a waste of the great Sharon D. Clarke — is that Grande gets a little swallowed up by all the noise around her. This is where the scope of the film, as opposed to the Broadway production, comes into play. Grande’s is hands down the best performance in both movies, but the opening song has so much going on around her that she doesn’t stand out as much as she should.
As with “No One Mourns the Wicked,” the thrill of “One Short Day” is in seeing how successfully the film pulls off these locations. The Emerald City looks fantastic and contained — the latter may seem like damning with faint praise, but given how overwhelming Wicked can be, it’s nice to have some restraint here.
While the song itself has never been a personal fave, Erivo and Grande sound incredible together (this will become a recurring theme), and we get an expanded Wizomania featuring original Broadway stars Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth. It’s good to see them, isn’t it? Yeah, we probably don’t need the added exposition, and the way they immediately fall into the Elphaba and Glinda roles is ultimately distracting, but the key to Wicked is not taking it too seriously, and this fits that approach well.
“Stephen Schwartz, you’re not gonna get away with this!” alert: “There are bridges you cross you didn’t know you crossed until you’ve crossed.” The line shouldn’t work, but somehow it does, and much of the credit for its success in Wicked: For Good goes to Grande, who gives an impressively layered performance in the first Wicked but gets to be even more nuanced in the sequel. She nails the “I Couldn’t Be Happier” section of the song, which requires Glinda to put on a brave face for the assembled Ozians while cluing in the audience to her inner turmoil.
The rest of the number is sort of just a retread of “No One Mourns the Wicked” with the addition of some new Elphaba-centric conspiracies. What makes “Thank Goodness/I Couldn’t Be Happier” rank as high as it does is Grande’s portrayal of a woman trying to hold it all together from her new position at the top while reckoning with the sacrifices she made to get there.
If this were a ranking of the best songs in Wicked the musical, “The Wizard and I” would be close to No. 1. It’s still a banger in the movie, naturally, again performed well by Erivo. She even manages to do the “No father is not proud of you” line without making it sound awkward, a constant struggle for Elphabas who aren’t Lindsay Mendez. Even though Yeoh can’t really sing her brief part at the beginning of the song, you quickly forget about that when Elphaba is wandering through the practical Shiz sets.
When she runs out to the cliffside, things get a little shakier, and the artificiality of the CGI backgrounds and confusing lighting takes over. There’s also the overly literal depiction of Elphaba having “a vision almost like a prophecy” — we actually don’t need that! We just saw “No One Mourns the Wicked” and can probably put two and two together on our own. Erivo’s performance remains solid throughout, though she’s better at the longing than the musical comedy.
“Eleka nahmen nahmen, ah tum ah tum, eleka nahmen”: I don’t know what the fuck she’s saying, but girl, I am living. The pacing of Wicked: For Good feels draggier than Wicked’s, so it’s a thrill when we arrive at the electric 11 o’clock number. (Really more of a 10:30 p.m. number here, given how stretched out the ending is.) “No Good Deed” feels like the song Erivo has been waiting for, and she crushes it. Obviously, the entire movie couldn’t operate on this wavelength — we have to build to something, after all — but it’s the first real goosebumps moment since the end of the prior film.
“No Good Deed” could easily rank higher on this list if it weren’t slightly weighed down by Chu’s most frustrating excesses. There is once again an unnecessary literalism to the scene with repeated flashes to what Fiyero is experiencing instead of just letting us focus on Elphaba. And once the camera pulls back to show her surrounded by flying monkeys, the muddy CGI screensaver vibes are inescapable. Toward the end, Elphaba is so backlit, you have to squint to see her. Thankfully, Erivo’s “Fiyero!” option up is the best distraction possible.
We can acknowledge that when Grande is nominated — or perhaps even wins! — an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, that’s category fraud, right? While Glinda is (sort of) a supporting character in Wicked, she is fully the co-lead of Wicked: For Good, her arc so central to the story that even her very brief reprise of “I’m Not That Girl” becomes one of the film’s most essential moments.
After the ostentatious set piece of Glinda’s thwarted wedding and the Animal stampede, it’s a relief to get a quieter moment, and Chu mercifully keeps the focus entirely on Glinda here. Grande sings this song beautifully because of course she does, but she also lets her voice break — her performance is more about the character than sounding perfect.
The split screen in “What Is This Feeling?” marked the first time I felt confident that Chu was going to pull Wicked off. Here’s something that feels distinctly cinematic — you can’t do that onstage, and it immediately elevates this number to the top tier. It also emphasizes the sapphic undertones, but if you didn’t already understand “What Is This Feeling?” to be a love song, (Sarah Paulson in Carol voice) I can’t help you with that.
It really can’t be overemphasized how good Erivo and Grande sound together, so forgive me for bringing it up again (and not for the last time). As Elphaba and Galinda move through a number of scenes and Shiz sets — more credit to the stellar production design — the actors’ harmonizing keeps the number grounded. It’s a magic trick.
It’s clear Grande is Wicked’s most valuable player well before “Popular.” She creates a Galinda — still with the “Gah” at this point in the movie — who pays homage to the Galindas before her without feeling overly derivative. You can tell Grande grew up as a superfan of the show but also understands the importance of leaving her own mark. It’s no surprise, then, that she nails “Popular,” delivering ample natural humor and vocal riffs that somehow don’t feel too showy.
Again, Chu manages to insert a movie moment that couldn’t be done onstage in the makeover montage. See also: the camera shooting from above as Galinda does her best Esther Williams (without the pool) on the dorm-room floor. There are so many little moments I could point to, like Grande doing Evita arms on “especially great communicators.” By the time the set is bathed in pink light and she options up for the third time, you realize you’re watching a future classic movie-musical moment.
“Defying Gravity” is undeniable. It’s a showstopper so showstopping that they decided to break Wicked into two movies. (Whether they actually needed to do this is something you can debate elsewhere.) Because it’s the most potent moment in the show and because Erivo and Grande sound unbelievable — have I mentioned they harmonize well? — it was never not going to be at the top of this list.
Well, near the top. There are a few reasons “Defying Gravity” gets bronze instead of gold or silver. The biggest issue is how much action Wicked incorporates into the big finale, particularly at the end of the song. There’s an extended sequence in which Elphaba falls instead of flying and sees her younger self before she’s able to grab her broomstick. That’s followed by a bunch of aerial tricks as she evades the flying monkeys. The entire “So if you care to find me” verse ends up delayed and then the final lines and the iconic battle cry are delayed even further. It’s sort of like watching a music video with too many dialogue scenes. I want to hear the song!
But look, it’s “Defying Gravity.” You’re going to cry. You’re going to feel stirred. You’re going to gag at Elphaba’s silhouette in full Wicked Witch of the West garb. While I wish the film let the song unleash its full power — battle cry and smash cut to black is the obvious choice, not more Elphaba flying — it’s still a remarkable number that more than justifies adapting the musical to the big screen.
After two hours of songs that largely can’t compete with those of the first movie, what a relief it is when Wicked: For Good finally gets to the title number and hits it out of the park. There was no reason to doubt it — any time Grande and Erivo sing together in the Wicked movies, you can give yourself over completely to this world. “Defying Gravity” may be the more culturally sticky act closer, but “For Good” is the more emotionally potent one, and the pathos the film’s stars infuse the song with will have even the grumpiest moviegoer welling up.
Of all the strange Schwartzisms throughout the Wicked score, I’ve always accepted “like a sea dropped by a skybird” the most readily because of how beautiful the surrounding song is. (“I ask forgiveness for the things I’ve done you blame me for” is another potential clunker, but I sort of admire the subtle passive-aggressiveness.) Erivo and Grande tackle all these lyrics with what sounds like ease but what surely represents tremendous effort. They knew they had to sell this final duet for the movie to work, and despite my qualms with the Wicked sequel, “For Good” helps you forget many of the missteps that came before it.
Does the power of one song really make the film worth the price of admission? That depends on whether you think it counts as sticking the landing if the plane is already damaged beyond repair. “For Good” is not enough to elevate the movie to the level of the first Wicked, but it does end the story and these characters’ arcs on an undeniable high note. Whatever your bigger-picture feelings, for this sequence alone, we have been changed for good.
Maybe it’s because I’m not immune to Bailey’s charms. Maybe it’s because I’m finding myself in a very “Life’s more painless for the brainless” place of late. But “Dancing Through Life” is my pick for the standout musical number in both Wicked movies, a lengthy sequence with an abundance of moving parts (and a moving library set) that comes together into something extraordinary. Bailey is certainly a big part of the song’s success: He sounds great, and his irresistible pansexual Fiyero takes the film to the next level.
Do I love the new arrangement of the song? I do not! Yet Bailey makes it work with help from some really impressive choreo and more eye-catching sets — the aforementioned library and the underwater Ozdust Ballroom, complete with an Animal band (Sugar Glider on drums!). It’s not just Fiyero singing, though. “Dancing Through Life” is also a nice spotlight for Marissa Bode and Slater. The latter powers his way through the ultimate “You’re not gonna get away with this, Stephen Schwartz!” rhyme: “Nessa, I’ve got something to confess, a …”
Wicked is two hours and 40 minutes long, which is shocking when you consider it’s only the first half of a musical that’s about the same length. “Dancing Through Life” is definitely drawn out, making a meal out of Elphaba’s entrance to the Ozdust Ballroom and her unusual dance once she gets there. But the choice to slow things down pays off when Galinda joins her in one of the film’s more moving moments. From start to finish, the entire sequence is a welcome reminder of the musical’s power — and a perfect encapsulation of how well this cast and creative team have translated that to film.
