Ariana Grande, a celebrated singer and actress, rejected a hip-hop version of her song while working on Wicked.
Giving an interview to The Los Angeles Times, Stephen Schwartz, the composer and lyricist of Wicked, shared that during the recording of the movie’s song Popular, Grande refused to “hip-hop it up a little bit.”
Expanding on this, Schwartz revealed, “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.”
However, the lead actress in Jon M. Chu’s adaptation said, “Absolutely not, don’t do it. I want to be Glinda, not Ariana Grande playing Glinda.”
Notably, despite Grande’s refusal, Schwartz updated one part of the song with Grande as he quipped, “I had this idea for a new vocal ending.”
Further sharing the details, he added, “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.”
Notably, the Side to Side singer declined a modern version of the song, but she had worked with Mike on a dance-pop cover for Popular, which was featured on her 2013 debut album Yours Truly.
For the unversed, other than working on the recently released movie Wicked, Schwartz also wrote the music for the 2003 Broadway musical of the same name.
Wicked is based on the Broadway musical and the 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire, which tells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), and Glinda, the Good Witch (Grande).
They first meet at Shiz University and have a life-changing encounter with the Wizard of Oz, played by Jeff Goldblum.
It is pertinent to mention that Wicked has broken multiple box office records by raking in $164.2 million worldwide on its opening week.
