Double the Fun: A Review of Wicked: For Good’s Cast Album
The decision to split Jon M. Chu’s big-screen adaptation of Wicked into two films not only meant double the movies—already a major indulgence for fans of the Broadway musical—but also double the press tour looks, global premieres, merch collaborations, and of course double the cast recordings.
Have you spent the last year just itching to know what Cynthia Erivo’s riff at the end of “No Good Deed” would sound like, or dreaming about Jonathan Bailey’s rendition of “As Long as You’re Mine”? Well, I have too, and I have some thoughts about Wicked: For Good’s cast album. Let’s take it from the top.
Unlike its musical counterpart, Wicked: For Good was tasked with bringing its audience back into the world of Oz after a year-long hiatus, rather than a 15-minute intermission. Instead of jumping right into “Thank Goodness” like the musical does, we are welcomed back with a more formal introduction: “Every Day More Wicked.” The song is a semi-reprise of “No One Mourns the Wicked” (the Wicked: Part I opening track), but with an even greater, more frightening intro—the insinuation being that the Oz we are about to see is in a much darker place than where we left it.
We also hear some new lyrics that catch us up with the characters. To the tune of “Wizard and I”—her “I want” song from the first half of the story—Elphaba (Erivo) sings, “If I can just make them believe in the truth, that all that he says is a lie, that’s when they’ll finally bid the Wizard goodbye.” And so, the tone of Part II is clearly set.
I have always assessed an actor’s Glinda (Ariana Grande) by their approach to this song, specifically the bridge. Kristin Chenoweth, who originated the role of Glinda on Broadway, did it perfectly, and Grande makes for a worthy successor. You can hear exactly what Glinda is going through—her struggle with herself as she questions what is truly good and what is truly wicked; the effort she is exerting by masking her true emotions to please the public—and it’s clear from the start that this is Grande’s movie as much as it is Erivo’s.
The decision to add a new song to Wicked’s catalogue could not have been made lightly, but “No Place Like Home,” our first full solo from Elphaba, is necessary. She sings the ballad to a group of animals as they prepare their escape from Oz in order to avoid being thrown into cages by the Wizard, and it works both to explain Elphaba’s motivations and to underscore one of Wicked’s central messages. “Oz is more than just a place. It’s a promise, an idea, and I want to help make it come true,” Elphaba sings, and indeed, Chu seems to be asking his audience to think about their own society’s promise and possibilities—and not to give up on them.
The next track represents another new addition to the Wicked arsenal, if not to the story itself. “The Wicked Witch of the East,” which marks a pivotal narrative moment for Nessarose (Marissa Bode) and Boq (Ethan Slater), is actually part of Wicked’s stage production, but for several reasons it was left off of the Broadway recording. If you haven’t watched the film yet and are not familiar with the plot of the second half of the story, I would hold off on cueing up this one. I am glad that it was included, though. I think Slater’s Boq is spot-on, and Bode captures her character’s full arc in just three minutes and 23 seconds.
One of the most notable revisions to the film album involves the addition of Glinda to “Wonderful,” usually a duet between Elphaba and the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum). Schwartz has described this change as a storytelling decision, explaining that he and Wicked’s other creatives felt that they had to get Elphaba and Glinda together sooner in the film than when they do in the show. Grande’s vocals also have the nice effect of adding a bit of lightness to material that is otherwise quite dark.
Grande’s performance of “I’m Not That Girl (Reprise)” is very moving. One of my favorite things about the original Broadway cast recording of Wicked is the transition from “I’m Not That Girl (Reprise)” into “As Long As You’re Mine.” When you listen to them in chronological order, it’s seamless, dropping you right from Glinda’s heartbreak into Elphaba and Fiyero’s anticipated reunion. The film versions don’t blend the same way; instead, there’s about a minute’s worth of instrumental music between them.
Any longing I had for the Broadway track was subdued when Bailey, People’s 2025 Sexiest Man Alive, belted out, “Somehow I’ve fallen under your spell. And somehow I’m feeling so glad I fell” (move over “Dancing Through Life,” we have a new Fiyero song to swoon over). While the intro is a bit slow, the song quickly picks up to become one of my favorites on the album. Erivo brings it home perfectly with her last line: “For the first time, I feel wicked.”
As anxious as we may have been for Erivo and Bailey’s rendition of “As Long As You’re Mine,” Erivo’s 11 o’clock number, “No Good Deed,” was undoubtedly the most anticipated song among Wicked fans. The entire sequence in the film is executed masterfully. Erivo cements her rightful place in movie-musical history when she shouts out, “Fiyero, where are you?” followed by a chilling, “One more disaster I can add to my generous supply.” Then, as she approaches the bridge, she screams out Fiyero’s name in a battle cry similar to the one in “Defying Gravity.” The bridge has been tweaked in subtle but impactful ways—the tempo slows so that we can really hear Elphaba reckon with the concept of a good deed—only to give way to an ending that will surely have your audience erupt into applause (as mine did!).
If you listen closely to the first few seconds of “March of the Witch Hunters,” you’ll hear a chant that may sound familiar. Could that possibly be a rendition of the Winkie Guards chant from The Wizard of Oz? The song then goes into the track as we know it, though Slater’s Boq is a bit more sinister-sounding and the song ends with a line omitted from the musical album: a faint cry from someone in the chorus yelling, “Melt her”—a hint at what’s to come.
The second of the two new songs, “The Girl in the Bubble,” is an introspective solo ballad from Glinda—and one that seems to nod a little to Grande’s professional life, too, as Glinda reflects on the costs of being a public figure.
Unlike the original Broadway cast album, the film soundtrack ends with “For Good,” which feels fitting: Wicked: For Good foregrounds Elphaba and Glinda’s relationship in a way the stage musical does not. That dynamic is really the focal point of this cinematic phenomenon, so it only seems right to have the Erivo/Grande duet be the album’s end. Their voices blend together perfectly, hardly straying from the original framework of the song. Some things are just too good to touch.
