{"id":2174875,"date":"2025-11-24T13:57:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T13:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2174875"},"modified":"2025-11-24T13:57:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T13:57:36","slug":"wicked-composer-stephen-schwartz-on-new-songs-and-for-good-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wicked-composer-stephen-schwartz-on-new-songs-and-for-good-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wicked’ Composer Stephen Schwartz on New Songs and ‘For Good’ Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Minor spoilers below. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDefying Gravity\u201d may be the showstopper of Wicked<\/em>, but \u201cFor Good\u201d has grown into a phenomenon of its own. Ever since the Broadway show<\/a> launched in 2003, you or someone you know have probably heard it at a birthday party, a graduation, a retirement, or even a funeral or memorial service. Wicked<\/em> composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz is well aware of the life the ballad has taken offstage, and finds it \u201cenormously gratifying,\u201d he tells ELLE.<\/p>\n

This weekend marks a new chapter in the song\u2019s legacy, as the sequel to the Wicked<\/em> movie musical, called Wicked: For Good<\/a><\/em>, opens in theaters. The title itself represents the power the song holds in the story, in the relationship between lead protagonists Elphaba and Glinda, and in pop culture overall. And Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo\u2019s<\/a> rendition of the duet surely does the song justice. <\/p>\n

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In honor of the release of the new film and accompanying soundtrack, Schwartz participated in a listening session and fan Q&A, hosted by Spotify and Universal in New York on Thursday night. He\u2019s even launching exclusive content for The Lands of Oz on Spotify, an interactive feature on the app where he shares behind-the-scenes stories about the map of Oz. It\u2019s the perfect pairing to your first (or hundred and first) listen of the new album. <\/p>\n

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ELLE caught a few minutes with Schwartz before the event to discuss \u201cFor Good,\u201d writing two new songs for the film, and musical Easter eggs. <\/p>\n

I want to talk to you about the new songs. I interviewed Jon Chu<\/a> a couple weeks ago, and he said that when he was meeting with you in the beginning, he thought, \u201cThis one scene needs a song,\u201d and that you were like, \u201cGive me 48 hours.\u201d<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m not sure I wrote anything in 48 hours.<\/p>\n

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Spotify<\/span><\/figcaption>

Stephen Schwartz arrives at the Wicked: For Good<\/em> soundtrack listening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

Still, it seems like it came to you quickly. How did the new songs first come about?
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It\u2019s always based on storytelling. My job as a musical theater songwriter is to help tell the story and, with my collaborators, identify which parts of the story are best told through song. In the second movie, we identified two places where it was very important that each of the characters be able to express what was going on inside them, what they wanted at that moment, and that was best done through the medium of a song. Once those were pretty clear in terms of the story we were telling, it wasn\u2019t too difficult to write the songs.
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The first one I did was \u201cGirl in the Bubble,\u201d and I did write that pretty quickly. \u201cNo Place Like Home\u201d went through various iterations because, at one point, it encompassed more of the storytelling than it does now. There are things that we\u2019re seeing where she\u2019s not singing, but it was originally at one point part of the song. That took a while to arrive at the final shape.<\/p>\n

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What was it about \u201cGirl in the Bubble\u201d that made it come to you faster? And what were some of the ideas you wanted to include?<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s very clear what Glinda\u2019s going through there. It\u2019s obviously the turning point for the character\u2014what she\u2019s wrestling with in terms of what her life has been, which has been very easy up until now, and her decision to give up a lot of what she thought she wanted. Because she\u2019s actually quite a good person, even though she doesn\u2019t quite know it yet. She simply can\u2019t live the way she has been living, even though it\u2019s very comfortable.<\/p>\n

Then, of course, because she\u2019s a character that floats around in this bubble\u2014think about what that means. You\u2019re insulated from everything else. We have the term, \u201cliving in a bubble,\u201d and you\u2019re floating above whatever turmoil and difficulties are going on down below in the real world. She realizes that, even though it\u2019s an easier way to live, it\u2019s not a way that her soul will allow her to live anymore.<\/p>\n

I like how you see a bit of her backstory\u2014her younger self\u2014in the film.<\/h2>\n

Yeah. Full disclosure about that…Maybe I\u2019m not supposed to tell this, but it was in the screenplay, and then we didn\u2019t shoot it initially. When the movie was put together, in the rough cut, Jon Chu and [producer] Marc Platt decided, \u201cYou know what, we should have shot that scene.\u201d So they went back and shot it later on. I think it\u2019s very, very important.
Of course, as you\u2019re pointing out, we see Elphaba\u2019s younger self in the first movie, and at the very end when she\u2019s making a big change, she encounters a memory of her younger self. Similarly, at this moment in the second movie, Glinda confronts her younger self and sort of lets go of that within the song.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Place Like Home\u201d\u2014that\u2019s obviously a very iconic reference.<\/h2>\n

Of course. It\u2019s been sitting there for years, right? You gotta do it.<\/p>\n

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Tell me about writing that song and why it took on different forms at first.<\/h2>\n

First of all, the necessity for the song: There\u2019s an action in the scene, which is Elphaba trying to convince the animals who have given up on Oz and are escaping for their own safety, trying to convince them to stay and fight with her. But, more importantly, for the storytelling…and I don\u2019t want to give spoilers about the end of the movie, but I will say that Elphaba makes a significant sacrifice at the end of her story.<\/p>\n

We all felt it was really important to understand viscerally, to feel<\/em> how much she loves Oz, how important Oz is as her home, how much she wants it to be a good place, and how ferocious she is about fighting for it. When she\u2019s not able to accomplish her goals in the way that she had hoped to and has to make a great sacrifice in order to do so, you understand what it cost her to do it.<\/p>\n

Were Ariana and Cynthia collaborative in the writing at all?<\/h2>\n

Not in the writing, but certainly in the performances. Cynthia, with \u201cNo Place Like Home,\u201d there were a couple of changes she asked me to make in terms of a couple of words here or there. It was a little wordier, and she felt for her vocal performance, it would help if something that was two syllables would be one syllable, that kind of thing. Of course, I did what she asked in order to accommodate her performance.<\/p>\n

I remember watching a video where you said you incorporated part of \u201cSomewhere Over the Rainbow\u201d\u2014<\/h2>\n

Oh, yeah. Well, it\u2019s the \u201cUnlimited\u201d theme.<\/p>\n

Exactly. Did you place any Easter eggs<\/a> in this movie, too?<\/h2>\n

There are a lot of Easter eggs in the score, but they\u2019re not in these two songs. There are other ones to discover.<\/p>\n

Can you share a couple?<\/h2>\n

I will tell people that, in the very first number, when Glinda comes out of the palace and all the Gale Force soldiers are dancing and saluting her, to listen carefully to the accompaniment. There\u2019s an Easter egg there. We do it over and over again, so you should be able to hear it.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the centerpiece of this film is \u201cFor Good\u201d itself.<\/h2>\n

Now it\u2019s the title song!<\/p>\n

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Exactly. The song has become so representative of friendship, or female friendship in this case. People have sung it at funerals …<\/h2>\n

Graduations. People who are retiring\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026My fianc\u00e9\u2019s sister sang it at his bar mitzvah. What does that mean to you, to see people relate to it that way?<\/h2>\n

Of course, that\u2019s enormously gratifying to me. I have told this story before, but I\u2019ll tell it again, for the maybe three people who haven\u2019t heard it: When I was starting to write the song, my daughter Jessica was up at my house visiting. Jess has a friend that she\u2019s known since they were, like, 6 or 7. They\u2019re both adults now, and they\u2019ve been through a lot together. There were some times when they were angry and fighting, and then other times where they really helped each other through tough times. Her friend\u2019s name is Sarah. I went and talked to Jess with my yellow pad and pencil and said, \u201cI want you to imagine that you are never going to see Sarah again except one time. This is your chance to tell her what she\u2019s meant to you. What do you say?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I just wrote down a bunch of things she said, and that became more or less the first verse of the song. The reason I tell that story is that I think some of the power of the song is because it\u2019s true, because it\u2019s an expression about a true relationship, and it happens to be a true relationship between two women.<\/p>\n

When you saw Ariana, Cynthia, Kristin Chenoweth, and Idina Menzel sing the song together in the Wicked: One Wonderful Night<\/em> live concert, what was that like? Did you write the additional lyrics as well?<\/h2>\n

I did, yeah. First of all, it was such a surreal moment. I don\u2019t know that we\u2019ll ever see that again, all four of them on the same stage at the same time. The middle bridge of the song is Glinda and Elphaba apologizing to each other for some of the wrongs they\u2019ve done to each other. That didn\u2019t really seem appropriate within the context of these four ladies singing to one another. I thought, \u201cWell, what if I just rewrite the words of the bridge for this occasion so it\u2019s more about passing the torch?\u201d And yeah, I thought that it turned into a very effective moment.<\/p>\n

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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

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