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‘Wicked: The Soundtrack’ Album Review: Stephen Schwartz’s World-Beating Song Score Gets Its Due, and So Do the Divas Who Deliver It
The 'Wicked' soundtrack album merits separate listens, to really take in a Stephen Schwartz score that sends Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo soaring.
And for a young audience of budding theater kids, it’s going to open them up for good (no pun intended) to the sound as well as form of traditional Broadway, even with content that might feel to them as fresh as a combination of Taylor Swift and today’s headlines. “What Is This Feeling?” delivers two things everyone wants: it’s a patter song, or as close to one as “Wicked” gets — and, more important, it’s the first chance to see how well Grande and Erivo harmonize as frenemies, before the much heavier vocal pas de deux they do in debating the merits of “Defying Gravity.” (Spoiler alert ahead.) Schwartz and his collaborators are framing the story with an Oz that is populated by an angry, self-righteous, deluded and even bloodthirsty mob… led by a woman who is going along with the great lie, in hopes of eventually rebuilding a land that fell into genocide and fascism under corrupt leadership.
Or read this on Variety
