Ariana Grande Isn’t she a girl?
Grammy winner, 31, doesn’t want to change longtime sweetheart Song “Popular” from “Wicked” despite a different and new version of the tune being introduced.
“In the spirit of being open to new things for the film, my music team and I thought, let’s refresh the tone. Let’s maybe, I don’t know, hip-hop it a little bit,'” said the film’s composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz. An interview with the Los Angeles Times On Monday.
Ariana said, ‘Absolutely not, don’t do that. I want to be Glinda, not Ariana Grande who plays Glinda.
Grande was adamant that her version of Glinda could have no parallels with her own pop music career, but Schwartz was trying to re-imagine “the popular” for the film.
The actress also wasn’t convinced when it came to the change at the end of “Popular.” The project changed octaves during the song’s finale to take full advantage of Grande’s vocal range.
“I had this idea of a new vocal ending. Ariana was a little hesitant about it, but I told her that if I had thought of it for the original show, it would have been this way,” said Schwartz. “Once she was assured that this new piece of music was coming out of character, she got involved.”
‘Wicked’ director John M. Chi also told the times He at first advocated going big for “Popular” when it came to its visual scale, but was overruled by producer Marc Platt.
“I first had a version where Glinda and Elphaba go into her closet and get lost in this pink world where she turns a corner, and then another corner, and then another corner — like, this closet is so Is it big?” The 45 year old revealed. “But [producer] sediment [Platt] Said, ‘I don’t know whether we should go into this kind of imagination. Remember, Glinda doesn’t have magic, so this is confusing.”
“Well, what if all the bags we’ve been seeing for so long were actually her closet, and you didn’t know it until now?” Chu continued. “So then bringing this closet to life became a huge technological feat – big men in small spaces pulling doors and opening things at the right time, gadgets that opened remotely with batteries and cords. That mirror is a very heavy piece of machinery, because it has to be bent backwards in order to walk on it. That was always scary; Even in rehearsals, I was always hesitant. If she steps on those lights, her leg gets cut.
‘Wicked’ is in theaters now.
