How 'Wicked' Became Popular—Again

Before Elsa fled her kingdom in on the soaring tones of Frozen’s “Let it Go,” Elphaba took flight for the first time in Wicked’s “Defying Gravity.” 

Both are musical centerpieces of their stories — showstopping numbers that define their heroine’s breakthrough moment, with challenging and high-pitched musical riffs. Both were originally sung by Tony-award winner Idina Menzel. And now, both are major movie-musical hits.

Thanks to Jon Wu’s film adaptation of Wicked, “Defying Gravity” is flying high above the stage to the ears of the mainstream public.

Wicked, the 2003 Broadway musical that reimagines the lives of The Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good — and currently the fourth-longest-running Broadway show in history — hit the silver screen last November. With Tony-award winner Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba (who becomes the Wicked With of the West), and global pop singer Ariana Grande as Galinda (who removes the first “a” to become Glinda), the film was destined to make a dent in the box office solely due to its star power (Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh and Bridgerton heartthrob Jonathan Bailey are also a part of the film’s ensemble cast). 

Indeed, Wicked — which only adapts the first act of the musical. Part two, titled Wicked: For Good, arrives in late 2025 — has been a critical and commercial success since its release, with positive reviews and 10 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for Ervio and Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for Grande.

The film’s opening weekend ($164.2 million globally) made it the most successful film based on a Broadway musical, and its soundtrack has even found its way onto charts with “Defying Gravity,”  landing on the Spotify U.S. Daily Top 50, TikTok’s Top Tracks in the U.S., and YouTube’s Tracks Chart. On the Billboard 200 album chart, it debuted at a historic No. 2, the highest debut for a musical-to-movie soundtrack. Plus, either "Defying Gravity" or "Popular" broke the top 10 on Spotify in 45 countries around the world.

Perhaps even more remarkably, the past few months have seen the original Broadway soundtrack rapidly gaining popularity thanks to streaming and short-form video. From September 1, just days before the Wicked movie’s official second trailer was released, to early December, the Broadway soundtrack’s cumulative Spotify streams rose by almost 100 million, and in the week after the movie’s release, 14 songs from the original soundtrack entered Spotify Viral Charts around the world, with nine of them appearing in the top 10 of the U.S. chart.

Galinda, the “Popular” singer herself, would be pleased.

Wicked has long impacted young theater-goers and longstanding Broadway fans, but it may surprise people to know that critical reviews ranged from mixed to overtly negative upon its debut. Many reviewers were “disgustified” at the soundtrack’s “bland anthems” and lack of originality: 

“The talented Ms. Menzel will no doubt dazzle audience members whose musical tastes run to soft-rock stations,” went a particularly scathing review in the New York Times. While the soundtrack debuted at No. 125 on the Billboard 200, it was nowhere close to other modern musical chart debuts like The Book of Mormon’s 2011 debut at No. 31 (which eventually peaked at No.3), or Hamilton’s No. 12 debut in 2015. Meanwhile, at the 2004 Tonys, Wicked lost the coveted Best Musical award to Avenue Q.

Yet Wicked has maintained a legacy that’s held steady among musical and non-musical fans alike for over 20 years. Stephen Schwartz’s score might have been more palatable than complex, but it was likely by design: “I wanted it to sound otherworldly, but not inaccessible,” he said in a 2006 interview with the Arizona Republic. 

On Broadway, the production broke box office record after record, and, by 2009, it had become the highest weekly-grossing Broadway musical in history. Currently, it remains the second highest-grossing show of all time (1997’s The Lion King sits at No. 1). 

As short-form video gained more prominence in the late 2010s, young fans moved their discussions of Wicked from niche, obscure forums to wider audiences on TikTok. Posts using the Broadway soundtrack date back as early as 2018 on the platform, but ramped up in 2019 and 2020 as TikTok became more widespread across the globe. 

Many of these videos — some with tens of thousands of views — involve typical aspects of fan culture: crafting, cosplay, and POV videos for theater fans. But others play the musical as a soundtrack to their day-to-day lives: making selfie videos, dancing alone, or remarking on strange life happenings, demonstrating how Wicked had stretched beyond the stage and into the lives of listeners.

It was those listeners who likely boosted Wicked’s impressive rise in the lead-up to its movie adaptation. As the movie began filming in December 2022, the internet was abuzz with leaked set photos and speculating what the final product would look like. On TikTok, the Galinda-led track “Popular” saw a humungous surge in videos that was possibly spurred on by the filming. Three months into 2023, videos using the sound had grown by over 400%

But surprisingly, as the filming buzz continued, the way creators were soundtracking Wicked had shifted. The most viewed videos on TikTok using the original “Popular,” all of which were released in early 2023, had expanded beyond fan-made content: filming ocean life (84.1M views); their workplace (40.4M views); and even a strange five-second horror short using a beat-box remix (75.9M). Something was changing as the movie approached. Wicked was captivating listeners who weren’t just obsessive theater kids.

In the weeks after Wicked’s theatrical debut, its corresponding soundtrack quickly racked up streams and short-form creates. By November 23, the album had cumulatively garnered 14 million streams on Spotify. By the middle of December, they had grown to over 250 million, a 1678% increase. Now the album has over 500 million. 

The tracks with the highest listening numbers by far are “Popular” and “Defying Gravity,” the two primarily solo numbers sung by Grande and Erivo, respectively, that clearly define each character’s personality and motivation while creating a pylon for emotional connection.

For “Popular” — which at the time of writing 96.4k posts on TikTok — it’s, well, the allure of popularity. The hilarious and, perhaps, strangely intelligent song originally sung on Broadway by the objectively popular show business icon, Kristin Chenoweth, shines from the comedic talent of the equally (if not more) popular Grande. 

TikTok creators have latched onto one line in particular, where Galinda passionately yells at Elphaba in trying to prove her argument on popularity’s importance. It’s the perfect instance of what it feels like to believe you are completely right about something, and it’s perhaps the clearest reason why creators who don’t have a theater-loving background have been flocking to the sound. 

“Defying Gravity,” with 107.6k posts on TikTok at the time of writing, is the ultimate positive self-talk booster, a song about believing in yourself and standing for what’s right, even when no one appears to be on your side. In truth, the song’s message isn’t exactly revelatory, and the movie’s version of this finale track takes some liberties that aren’t in the stage version.

For one, the full track is almost three minutes longer than its original, with long instrumental pauses that can feel like a drag when all you want is to hear that final, belting riff from Erivo. Yet in response to the film, both the film and Broadway versions have seen massive TikTok growth.

The first day of tracking for the movie version on Chartmetric was November 25, 2024, when there were 11k videos on TikTok featuring "Defying Gravity." On January 23, 2025, that number reached 110k. On November 21, 2023, there were 2,009 TikTok videos with the Broadway version, and as of January 25, 2025, there were 5,858. Creators certainly have enough space to hold onto more than one version of the iconic belter.  

Short-form creators have long mined into the occasional hokiness of “Defying Gravity,” pairing eccentric videos of pets or silly challenges with both versions. And, as many were paying attention to the movie’s “insufferable” press tour (as Grande described), another section of the internet was quick to make parodies of the tour’s most meme-worthy moment, when Grande and Erivo became emotional at the suggestion that fans were “holding space” for “Defying Gravity’s” lyrics. The hashtag #holdingspace, which is filled with Wicked press tour edits and parodies, has 25K posts on TikTok as of this writing. It’s yet another reflection of Wicked’s audience extending beyond its conventional fanbase, giving new life to a decades-old musical. 

A number of other trends have led to the overall album’s upswing of engagement on TikTok, some of which have to do with the movie marketing itself. The day of Wicked’s release, the film’s YouTube channel published the full performance of “What Is This Feeling,” a rousing early-act number that has Erivo and Grande’s characters spar over roommate squabbles. Viewers quickly took note of its head-scratchingly perfect synchronized choreography, turning it into a dance trend that’s led the sound to over 16.9k posts on the platform currently. Even the official Wicked TikTok took notice, posting a series of choreography tutorials on the moves that have since cleared 16 million views and 1.5 million likes.

Other viral spikes have come from more organic places. The boisterous, sweeping “Dancing Through Life,” is sitting at 15.9k posts on TikTok with creators obsessing over its choreography and Bailey’s studly voice, but another corner of the platform is fixated on a very small portion of the song — one where Elphaba’s sister, Nessa (Marissa Bode), sings about being asked out on a date by the munchkin boy, Boq (Ethan Slater). Some viewers latched onto Bode’s pronunciation of “Boq;” now, multiple posts with the caption “me and boq” have upwards of millions of views.

Wicked — the Broadway show and the movie musical — is still so popular with audiences today, whether listeners are long-time fans of the soundtrack’s larger-than-life melodies and hope-filled messages, or creators who relate to parts of the song with their own, idiosyncratic lives. The incandescent score alongside Elphaba and Galinda’s loving friendship that persevered against all odds struck a heartfelt chord that’s had listeners and audiences “rejoicifying” for over 20 years.