Ariana Grande rejected attempts to make "Popular" sound more hip-hop

Wicked fever has swept the nation, and that fever is reaching a pitch around Araiana Grande and a possible Oscar nomination. In a new piece for the Los Angeles Times, director Jon M. Chu, composer Steven Schwartz, and the film’s crew rave about the “golden-age movie star” and her performance of one of the musical’s most beloved numbers, “Popular.” The film version is slightly tweaked from the stage, but not so much that the changes are drastic—another credit to Grande’s instincts as Glinda, according to Schwartz. 

“In the spirit of being open to new things for the movie, my music team and I thought, let’s refresh the rhythm. Let’s, maybe, I don’t know, hip-hop it up a little bit. Ariana said, ‘Absolutely not, don’t do it. I want to be Glinda, not Ariana Grande playing Glinda,'” Schwartz tells The Times. In fact, Grande was so protective of Glinda she didn’t even want to add what became a show-stopping dance break finale to the number. “I had this idea for a new vocal ending” for “Popular,” Schwartz explains. “Ariana was a little hesitant about it, but I told her that if I had thought of it for the original show, this is how it would have been. Once she was reassured that this new bit of music was coming out of character, she was on board.”

In general, the Wicked team only have the most glowing things to say about Grande, even going so far as to call her a “modern-day Lucille Ball”—”And I know we hear that a lot, but that’s what it felt like,” choreographer Christopher Scott says. “Just how clever and smart she is, and how her comedy is so funny because it’s thoughtful.” And as Schwartz notes, the film works because Grande is one half of the equation. “They were cast individually, but what luck that those two women have such chemistry together,” he shares. “Without that, they would individually have been great, but the emotion in the movie wouldn’t quite have been there.”