Track Listing

1. No One Mourns the Wicked - Cristy Candler
2. Dear Old Shiz
3. The Wizard and I - Idina Menzel
4. What Is This Feeling? - Kristin Chenoweth
5. Something Bad - William Youmans
6. Dancing Through Life - Michelle Federer
7. Popular - Kristin Chenoweth
8. I'm Not That Girl - Idina Menzel
9. One Short Day - Kristin Chenoweth
10. A Sentimental Man - Joel Grey
11. Defying Gravity - Idina Menzel
12. Thank Goodness - Kristin Chenoweth
13. Wonderful - Idina Menzel
14. I'm Not That Girl (Reprise) - Kristin Chenoweth
15. As Long as You're Mine - Norbert Leo Butz
16. No Good Deed - Idina Menzel
17. March of the Witch Hunters
18. For Good - Kristin Chenoweth
19. Finale - Kristin Chenoweth

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64 in Music
• Brand: WICKED
• Released on: 2003-12-16
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Cast Recording

Album Description
WICKED, STARRING KRISTIN CHENOWETH, IDINA MENZEL AND JOEL GREY. Decca Broadway proudly presents the original cast recording of WICKED, Broadway's most talked about new musical. The box office is already over $10 Million! With a score by Stephen Schwartz (Broadway's Pippin, Godspell), libretto by Winnie Holzman (TV's My So-Called Life) and based on the best-selling novel by Gregory Maguire, the musical is a prequel to the legendary classic, THE WIZARD OF OZ. WICKED explores the early life of the witches of Oz: Glinda and Elphaba. One witch, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious and very popular. WICKED stars Tony Award® winner Kristin Chenoweth (You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown) as Glinda, Idina Menzel (Rent) as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Tony® and Oscar® Winner Joel Grey (Cabaret) as The Wizard. The Original Cast Recording -- featuring an essay by Wicked novelist Gregory Maguire, original color photos from the show and a complete libretto.

Amazon.com
One of the most common complaints about musicals is that the books are flimsy pretexts from which to hang numbers. Wicked runs into the opposite problem: it has a great plot, but too often the songs just get in the way. Based on Gregory Maguire's novel of the same name, Wicked tells us what happened between Glinda the Good and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, before Dorothy showed up in Oz. And the show is lucky to boast a pair of ace leading women in the main roles. As Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth delivers a sensational star turn, displaying a crystal-pure voice and sharp comic timing; Idina Menzel lends her powerful pipes to the tricky role of Elphaba. Unfortunately, you wish they had better material to work with. Stephen Schwartz's pop score is often dragged down by overly synthetic orchestrations and sentimental lyrics (think Chicken Soup for the Witch). Still, at its best Wicked is a seductive slice of popular entertainment that could well give a younger audience a lasting taste for musical theater. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

MICHAEL KUCHWARA Associated Press
"the Decca Broadway CD is the fastest-selling cast recording since "Rent," having sold nearly 250,000 copies since being released"

Customer Reviews

A modern musical masterpiece with two powerhouse leads.
Having just seen this a few weeks ago, "Wicked" blew me away. I wasn't expecting such a spectacular staging. Like any good Broadway musical, it taps into every emotion in the book, and with two masterful performances in the leads, the material is given every chance to shine. Even when the material is a tad weak.
The story, as the other 293 reviewers have stated, needs not to be reiterated. However, I was continually surprised at how clever and funny the whole thing was. It's ingenious, and like, oh, probably a million other persons, went out and bought the novel right away.
This recording is an excellent souvenir of the show. Like most excerpted cast albums, you're gonna miss a lot. Quite a bit happens between songs...
...nevertheless...
...the songs that floored me initially are all here. Idina Menzel is simply amazing. Having followed her career since "Rent" and her solo album, it's a joy to see other people finally discovering what the rest of us have known for quite some time.
Kristin Chenoweth is absolutely hysterical. Her phrasing and timing are impeccable. The two together are formidable...the closing "For Good" tugs at the heart strings both the first and the fiftieth time you hear it.
And yes, "The Wizard and I" and "Defying Gravity" are the two standouts, and rightly so. Yet I find the humor of "Popular" and "What is This Feeling" just as memorable.
I agree with one previous reviewer that the supposedly "weak" songs are only so out of context. Trust me...during the show, they're essential.
When you're dipping into this album for songs, yes you will skip to the big ones. But I implore you from time to time to "put the needle" at the beginning, and let it run. For this and many other musicals, it's an exhilarating experience.

Incredible
Although I've been a huge admirer of both Kristin Chenowith and idina Menzel for a few years now, I was not sure what to expect upon first hearing this soundtrack. Actually, I ended up seeing the show on broadway, and buying the CD the day after because i couldn't get enough of this music! Stephen Schwartz has made a brilliant creation, and couldn't have gotten better voices to sing it. The vocal harmonies are beautiful throughout. Defying Gravity, the real showstopper (much thanks to Ms. Menzel's UNBELIEVABLE voice), gave me almost as big of a chill when hearing it on the soundtrack as it did in live performance. Ms. Chenowith's lovely voice carries songs as well, and the song Popular is cute and funny, while showing off her vocal talent. Aside from Defying Gravity, my favorite songs are I'm Not That Girl (sung by Ms. Menzel), and the love ballad As Long as You're Mine. It's a fun, entertaining musical more full of emotion than I had expected it would be. Between Norman Leo Butz, and the two leading women, I can hardly put into words the feeling that their voices produce- you have to hear it to know! This is definitely one of the best new broadway shows to come about since RENT, and I hope it has a long, successful run.

"There are very few at ease with moral ambiguities...
....so we act as though they don't exist." The Wizard sings that in "Wonderful" and it's the plot of the show in a nutshell. The Green Witch who defied the Wizard, was then villanized by a closeminded society, and was labeled as "Wicked".

Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and Thomas Maguire have created a musical which is timeless. It's a self standing work of art that speaks for itself and runs without need of the oil of the hour (which perhaps explains critics' hesitancy to heartily applaud it). This enters the arena of grand artistic achievement. It does what great art can do: stirs the emotions, provokes thought, and engages you fully.

I was never a big fan of "Wizard of Oz", but the show's poster (no kidding), concept of the "backstory" and revisionist history, Stephen Schwartz' music, and darkly comic sensibility enticed me. It was everything I thought it would be, but much more. This show is as heartbreaking as it is funny, as warm and friendly as it is dark and satirical, and anyone can appreciate it. It's social commentary is sharp, it's numbingly hilarious, and it's observations are keen and strike many chords, but it's heart and soul is what emanates from every moment and gets the audience to rise up on it's feet every night. You end up investing yourself in these characters, this fantastical world, and it does it better than any other show I've ever seen.

Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth are gems, and reason enough to buy this CD. They could sing the phone book, but luckily they have what I think is Schwartz' best work to date. It runs the gamut of musical expression. We start off with the foreboding, modern classical, and deceivingly celebratory "No One Mourns the Wicked" and ends with the haunting folksy lullaby-cum-pop belt ballad "For Good". We have cleverly hidden biting commentary through Glinda's rib crackingly funny tuneful Broadway standard "Popular" ("it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed, so it's very shrewd to be very, very popular, like me.") and very fun and melodic Top-40-Pop style "Dancing Through Life", which evoke the pleasures of the privileged rich, good looking, and "in-crowd", but are really used to illustrate the themes of selfishness, superficiality, and "do whatever it takes to get to the top", and contrast with Elphaba's ongoing struggles with doing the right thing and doing what's "easy", and indeed how hard life is for many people (in this show, it's a tragic play acted out between Elphaba's sister Nessarose and a munchkin named Boq who are used, hurt, pitiful creatures). I love all the songs on this CD (not counting "Something Bad" and "March of the Witch Hunters") but if I had to pick some to recommend, I'd say "Wizard and I", which display Elphaba's hopes and dreams (and Idina Menzel's remarkable vocal skills) and contain a sad irony ("unlimited, my future is unlimited"). Then there's "What is This Feeling", an infective, catchy, edgy, comic, upbeat tune about Glinda and Elphaba's "loathing" for one another (and yes, they become friends). "I'm Not That Girl" is simple and heartbreaking. Elphaba longs for love, basically, but it's completely lacking in bitterness and self pity, and is full of mournfulness and duty, and it hits you hard.

The show-stopper "Defying Gravity" is a full blown knock-the-house-down "I'm not taking this anymore" change of weather. It gives you chills and pumps adrenaline at the same time. Menzel's miraculous vocals, the determined, wise, powerful lyrics, and Schwartz' beautiful, urgent, emotive, sometimes rock melody pushes this climactic epic crescendo of a song into Broadway history. Then there's the second Act, with Kristin Chenoweth's shining moment "Thank Goodness" , where she subtly changes the character of her character, and perhaps conveys the theme of the entire show, in front of our eyes "there's a kind of a sort of cost, there's a couple of things get lost, there are bridges you cross you didn't know you crossed until you crossed." It's a beautiful, tone changing, chameleon like, up and down song, that perfectly illustrates that true talent only needs a small space to get across big themes. Then of course I love "As Long As You're Mine" (I can't imagine Margaret Hamilton singing this one), the uber-powerful and despairing "No Good Deed" (it's like "Defying Gravity" part two but angry). Then the most beautiful song of the show, "For Good": Elphaba is defeated, and admits that she is "limited". It breaks your heart, but the rest of the song is a bittersweet balm and testament, poetic ode, to friendship.

The character development in this show is some of the best I've ever seen. Every character goes on a full journey. It is something I rarely see anymore and which is delightfully refreshing, and helps in our emotional investment in the story. Personally I could relate to Elphaba, and hers are themes one can immediately, viscerally relate to: destiny, being an outsider, being shunned by society, friendship, integrity in the face of adversity. That said, Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth own this show. They are opposite, contrasting equals in talent and presence, one serious, mysterious, loving, and sarcastic, one beautiful, caring, yet selfish and superficial. They own their roles and their songs, they ARE these characters, bring them to life. The two of them and their roles are among the greatest female performances and characters to ever grace the Broadway stage.

Underneath it all, this is the story of a courageous girl who simply tries to live, to do right, yet is thwarted, and how she changed another girl's shallow life through friendship. Among all it's themes - corruption, destiny, rebellion, propaganda, deception, selfishness, misconception, racism, love, hatred, popularity, acceptance - this is it's greatest and it's strongest. It's what we take from it. And every aspect of the show, acting, characters, plot, and Schwartz' fine score breathing through and supporting it all, comes together to tell this story, and it's told brilliantly.