How Wicked’s Music Was Reimagined For Film w/ Jon M. Chu & Jack Dolman

31:18And, you know, maybe an afterthought in some way and one of the things I'm the most proud of uh by proxy because all credit goes to John Powell and Stephen Schwartz for this is the way that the cinematic use of music was leveraged in Wicked between the songs and to get into the songs and to come out of the songs and also within the songs but I think one of the things that John Powell and Stephen Schwartz did so beautifully was that the themes from the stage musical are used in our score, but they are given a totally new color, sometimes harmonic DNA, orchestration. And so you end up feeling like you're watching a piece of cinema rather than a Broadway show that's been superimposed into the medium of cinema.

32:12So it becomes another ingredient of cinema. I mean, we're making a film. And so I think that John Powell and Stephen Schwartz did such an incredible job of bringing this music into a completely new dimension. And I can't think of many film musicals that have done that with the score between the songs. And also the songs are transformed as well, But I think that's one of the big successes of both Wicked films. This episode is brought to you by the National Music Publishers Association, or the NMPA. You know that song you can't get out of your head? Someone wrote that. And behind every hit song is a songwriter who deserves to be paid fairly for their work.

32:59That's where the NMPA comes in. The National Music Publishers Association is the trade organization representing all American music publishers and their songwriting partners. And every day, the NMPA's mission is to protect and increase the value of songs. Based in Washington, D.C., the NMPA works on the front lines, shaping legislation, handling litigation, and navigating regulations, all to ensure that publishers and songwriters are paid fairly for every use of their work. And they're not afraid to go up against big tech to do it. The NMPA also celebrates songwriters through certifying gold and platinum hits through their official program and hosting events honoring the creators behind the music we love all year long.

33:40To learn more about this organization, head to NMPA.org. That's NMPA.org. John, I wanted to ask you about how you've worked with a lot of top-tier musicians in your time as a director. In the film world, you've just worked with so many great players in the music world, from Justin Bieber, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Cynthia, Ariana, all these big characters. I'm wondering, has there been anything that has surprised you with how these people work? Yeah, I've been very, very lucky. You know, I learned a lot from each. When I think about Lin-Manuel Miranda, I do not believe in genius. I think people can make genius things, but I don't think people are just geniuses.

34:28However, Lynn is pretty as close as you can get. His voice messages of songs and stuff are amazing and insane, and his understanding of language, I think that's the thing that I learned the most, is how important lyrics are. I had done dance movies, and I had done movement stuff, and so I knew how to find the lyricism in, or the musicality, I guess, in cuts, and in dance and even music, but lyrics were so important in the Heights. And I had to make room for that. And I had to understand that. And he had to teach me a little bit of like, you got to hear these three words, John. I know you want to feel real, but like you got to hear those things.

35:12And they mean so much. So I've loved working with him. And it comes so instinctively from him. It can happen at any moment. I think I felt that similarly with even Justin Bieber, even at 14 years old. No matter what you say about him, even at that time, he was doing big shows and we'd be in the tour bus and he'd be alone playing video games because he's coming down from the show. And then he would go just naturally, a kid, to his computer and he would start writing music in every city he was. and he had a folder from every city. And in those folders were tracks and tracks of stuff that he was doing alone.

35:52None of this was ever going to be released. This was him as a 14 year old doing some amazing stuff, but it wasn't quote unquote part of his brand or whatever he was at that moment. So I knew very early, oh, this kid is like the real deal. He loves music. He's going to do this for the rest of his life. This is not a performance. This is what he does. And I feel that with Ari and Cynthia as well. I mean, obviously those two. But what I love about someone like Ariana is she's also like a tech nerd. Like she gets in that Pro Tools and gets down. Like she wanted to talk about craft with me and in the tech of it all.

36:29And I didn't even know half the things she was saying. But when she sees that computer and she sits down, it's like she is fast and she knows exactly where to go. And I thought that was so beautiful. And then the two of them together, I mean, Cynthia obviously knows her stuff and has such great tastes and opinions about how her voice is. So all of them were different in a way, but all of them were about craft. It was not about the performance of being a star at all. All of them I could see being doing whatever show that would fulfill them as a musician and not necessarily the red carpets, even though they do that very well.

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38:41That's awesome. I'm wondering, did you and Ariana ever work together on some sort of like editing processes? She came in to do a little bit of comping of vocals on Popular at one point and taking a look at some of the options that we had. but we you know once we recorded the the vocals and live and then had them sort of in the box a lot of it flowed from what decisions were being made inside the avid inside of the picture cut and so that kind of dictated a lot of the options that we we chose but I just I wanted to also mention just about process and witnessing people's process you know working with Stephen Schwartz was very illuminating for me because I've worked with a lot of composers and Stephen's been doing this for such a long time and I do think they're geniuses.

39:36I think he's one of them. We got some disagreement here. But despite his great genius and his incredible talents, his ability to just be a storyteller like John was saying, but also let his instincts and his compositional choices be a kind of fluid reaction to whatever was going on with John's vision or with the shape that the movie was taking and letting his fingers on the piano just sort of like naturally go to places that were in the service of that while also keeping the integrity of his songs intact. I've never seen anything like that before, and it was incredible to work with him and to witness that.

40:20That is so cool. And one of the things that always kind of blows my mind about Wicked as a project is that you're adapting a musical, but you're not only adapting that, the musical is an adaptation. And also in Wicked for Good, you're also rubbing up against Wizard of Oz and Wizard of Oz is also an adaptation. So you've got like just like a Russian doll of different source material. So John, I'm wondering what bits and pieces did you take from each of those projects, whether it's the books that these two great movies slash musicals were based on? Tell me a little bit about what you took away. Well, in a weird way, it felt very instinctual because I'm a child of all of this.

41:00I grew up in my family came over from Taiwan and they Wizard of Oz was a huge part of them raising us. I'm the youngest of five. And this the American fairy tale about the American dream. They started a Chinese restaurant and lived the American dream. They still there. Fifty six years. The restaurant is still there. And so I understood the power of what Wizard of Oz is. And the L. Frank Baum books, the Denslow drawings are huge points of contact in our culture already. Even the colors of the yellow brick road or the green. Like all of it is so a part of how I understood the world growing up. And then I saw Wicked when I was in college when it first came out.

41:52And so for me, it was at a moment where my life was changing. I was leaving home. I was looking back at my own fairy tales and deconstructing them. And that's exactly what Stephen and Winnie were doing in the show. They were taking this story of our youth and shattering it and saying, what if you looked at it in a different way? What if those rules were not necessarily meant for us? What if that road was not meant for us? What if there is no man behind the curtain? I love that. It sparks my brain so much. And the idea of this friendship, you know, there's a lot of movies about romance, but no, almost no movies about friendship because friendship doesn't have a nice clean bow on it.

42:35You can't get married and you don't have kids and happily ever after. Friendship is consistency. Friendship is nuance. Friendship is showing up time and time again, disappointing each other. Maybe some having some resentment, forgiving each other, and then growing from there. And some friendships even just end, and that's it. And yet there is a value to that. So I love that this musical did that. So I had these very big pick points for this. And of course, the movie, the 1939 movie, has been around, it's a giant icon in cinematic history. It is why a lot of the language that we do is in cinema.

43:16And going to film school, you can't escape that idea. So all of those things were sort of in me. So when I was doing this movie, I think for me, it was just trying to make it as of this time of where I'm at, of where we are all at as possible, because I knew the timeless truths would stick. Those have persevered. And yet when Cynthia sings Wizard and I are Defying Gravity, when she sings it, it feels like I've heard those words for the first time in my life. And I'm seeing this character for the first time in my entire life. when Glinda comes in when Ariana comes in and she's singing popular or she's singing couldn't be happier or she's singing for good I look at her and I'm like I know these songs I've seen every cover I've been lifted to it over and over and she does it in a way that feels in a weird way she would say I know Glinda better than I know Ariana Grande I know what it feels like to where people want light from you and I don't even know who I am to give that light to me the more we dug into the truth, the more the timeless nature of this timeless tale served everything up.

44:27I mean, I guess that's the testament to why this story has persevered. It taps on everything that we are told, everything that we question, and especially at this time. And so, yeah, it felt very natural. And everyone had their own version of this. Cynthia, Ari, even Jack even Powell I mean and especially Stephen and Winnie like everyone had their own thing and so for me it was like understanding everybody's sort of in on this and learning and trying to incorporate some stuff but also really following my own instincts on yeah and interestingly um I didn't realize this quite at first I probably should have been able to pick up on it but um the melody for unlimited when you're singing unlimited kind of harkens back to somewhere over the rainbow with that kind of octave jump.

45:15I'm wondering, Jack, are there any other musical callbacks or ties that you can tell between Wicked and The Wizard of Oz? Yes, there are little Easter eggs sprinkled throughout. It's actually, and this is publicly known, Unlimited is the first seven notes, I believe. Really? So Unlimited, somewhere over the rainbow. unlimited amazing my future is over the you know so it's actually the first seven i think i've got that right and then you have little homages in um you'll see in wicked for good in the second movie that uh the song thank goodness or couldn't be happier the melody goes couldn't be happier which um is a sort of love letter to follow the yellow brick road and there's a lot i'm not going to keep singing but oh no i love your voice we're just going to turn this into a vocal performance It's for Jack.

46:11John, you can leave. It's fine. Sorry, John. Sorry, sorry. But there are little Easter eggs, love letters sprinkled throughout. And he's a trickster, Steven, with that kind of stuff in it. It's pretty cool. The fans will know. Yeah. And then, of course, I mean, of the two original songs that you guys put into Wicked for Good, one of them is called No Place Like Home, obviously a callback to Wizard of Oz. I want to go over these two songs since they're both new. So let's start with No Place Like Home. For those who haven't seen the movie yet, what can you tell us about where it sits in the movie and why it was so important?

46:48Well, I'll just kind of say a couple things and I'll let John go into the bigger narrative picture of it. But No Place Like Home sits at a moment of conflict for our lead Elphaba. She's struggling with being hunted at that point in the film. She's struggling with where she is in her journey, what she wants, what's important to her. And so it is a hugely important song for her arc, her character's arc in the second film. I will also add that No Place Like Home is a nod to the book, the L. Frank Baum book, not the movie, because we don't have the rights to the movie. So none of those things are for the...

47:33Our inspiration was always the L. Frank Baum book. that said um it is it is something that has endured over all these years and um i think for us and and especially steven because steven really brought it to the table and said you know what happens to the moment where you when you question the thing that you've been fighting for your home doesn't even want you alive and is home a place or is it an idea and if it's the if it's an idea then why do you need to be here for it and should we just leave like I think those questions that we've at least for me I've always wondered about where Elphaba sits these are the questions that I sort of wanted to understand and so and Stephen already had an insight exactly where it was so it was really cool to hear the the first time the girls had ever heard it the first time we it was the first time we all got together at my house for dinner and I happened to have a uh i was leaving for london so everything was moved out but there was a piano in there because the person moving in had brought their family piano and moved in early and so we all had dinner it was again sort of at the end of the coveted lockdown so we hadn't all seen each other in person and steven schwartz winnie and two girls are there it's the first time those two girls are together in front of us they never did chemistry reads together and schwartz got on the piano and and started playing the song, their new songs for them.

49:00And so they got to listen to it in front of us. And they just, I mean, there was lots of tears. And as he sang it out loud, it was just one of those great moments. And then he sang the other one for Ari. And then he started playing For Good. And he's like, shall we? And they just did it for the first time together. And that moment, I took my kids out of their bedrooms, like you better watch this thing right now. It's history. but when they sang it was like a revelation like oh my goodness the world does not know what's about to happen with them wow wow I didn't realize that those two songs were written so early so early that this is still COVID lockdown time y 'all might not have even met in person so did Stephen Schwartz take into account Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo's voices specifically when writing these extra songs yeah at that point they had already been cast but we just didn't say anything to them yet.

49:54I don't think maybe they knew, but they didn't know what the song was or how it was going to be. They just, um, and we had, and when they came in, I was sharing sort of like, um, costume designs and some production designs. So they were getting a lot that day. Um, uh, just sort of dumped on them just to, just to get a sense, even though everything would evolve. I mean, the songs would evolve. Our images would evolve over time, but it was just sort of the starting point to get us there. Um, so yeah, it was pretty, it was a pretty magical moment. What is a musical moment that you hope that people pick up on, Jack?

50:24I'm wondering if there's anything that maybe your average viewer might not have picked up on but y 'all put a lot of care and time into The way that the more kind of connected songs that have lots of different pieces within them are put together and flow It's hard to recognize how hard that is when you see it because it just works But the opening number, for example, Every Day More Wicked, is kind of like a let's remember where we've come from, where we are, what our characters are up to. It's one of those songs that kind of takes us around the horn of the whole world and all the characters. And it's a very complicated song.

51:04It has many different parts. It references many different elements of the glossary of Stephen's themes from the musical. and so making it work like a seamless free-flowing piece of music that feels like a piece of music but also does everything that we need it to do narratively took a lot of you know a lot of work to find and especially in the orchestration of it shout out to Jeff at Majin the song orchestrator just an incredible job of figuring out how to change the tone within that song for all the different things that it references, but also maintain a kind of just overarching integrity for that piece.

51:47So yeah, look out for that when you watch the film. Yeah, John, do you have any musical moments that you hope that people pick up on? I mean, the whole thing is a beautiful tableau of soundscape. I mean, every inch of it. I mean, I hope they don't notice it. I hope it becomes invisible and it feels so easy but deep down within myself when i i smile when it works um there are things like um even john powell's score in their fight at the yellow brick road is this this sort of ballet and it's we could have easily gone with comedic music but he did this really fun i don't even know what the style of it is um that just elevates it and um and he incorporates um i don't know if i should spoil this but he incorporates a song from their past and so it's a beautiful sort of blend of that too i also think this i mean i mean this we do this thing with the wedding that it intercuts with something else and i won't again go into the spoilers of it but it is not just a wedding it is two roads colliding in this moment and it is so difficult we did many versions of it but john powell um and uh and stephen schwartz finding this delicate razor thin edge of how to be two different tones at the same time and make it feel like one piece and they're opposite ends of the spectrum that is when you watch this i think when you watch the sequence you're like wow okay that is like that's cinema that's what cinema can do that no other medium can do but deep down that music is really supporting that um and of course when you see no good deed i mean it's gonna rip the roof off of whatever you're watching it does i have never watched it and not felt the need to like run around the theater and run outside and yell and then come back in and keep going.

53:46I also want to point out one other thing to answer that question, which is the end of this film, which of course I'm going to say nothing about, was a very tricky thing for us to get tonally with the music. And I think that what we were able to achieve in the end gives you a sort of feeling that could lead to this incredible saga sort of propelling you emotionally into the future in some way. I think that was the big thing that we unlocked was that there's an opportunity to say, when people leave the theater after seeing Wicked for Good, they're going to take the story with them forever. And how do we, through the music, somehow achieve that?

54:29Yeah, no small task. Especially considering the fact that you have this incredible collection of 10 songs leading up to that point. What do you do to get that satisfying feeling? So it took a lot of experimentation, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. And I think people will be excited by that. Yeah. And I love that you pointed out one of the ensemble numbers. John, I'm curious for you. You've worked on Step Up, which had tons of choreography to deal with. You know, you worked on In the Heights, which also prepared you for these moments. I'm wondering, what did you take away from those previous experiences that helped you with these gigantic ensemble numbers for Wicked for Good?

55:10Well, I think a lot of it was finding my taste with how camera works with movement or how camera works with music. I think part of it was understanding the technical aspects. You know, when you're doing the step-up movies, it's a, you can make mistakes. I was a young filmmaker. I was thrown into, okay, we're getting tracks from artists and we're using that in our choreography and we're maybe getting temp tracks that we're recording with all these dancers and then we're getting the real tracks later in the edit and then how do you cut it together so it builds an emotion and i think it's something like in the heights of even crazy situations to me is like a musical it's it's built like a musical we found these amazing songs by like grace chen and and these and these and these singers from like the 60s and the 50s and um and we incorporated them into scenes as if if it was a musical um And in the Heights, to me, it was about, all right, so how do we actually do a musical, an actual singing, dancing musical?

56:12That's where I really first had a pianist on set and that we're doing live things. That was the first time where we had, you know, background people singing with the track. You're bringing in actual singers to be on camera for that. where your actors, you're trying to help your actors find the entry point to these songs. And so it just helped me find my taste. Ultimately in Wicked, by understanding all these pieces and making a lot of mistakes previously, it allowed me to come into Wicked with a much more, I don't know, more focused, clear idea of how to do things so that I could only really focus on why we're doing things.

56:56and I could help with this giant army of people and help guide that and not get swept away by, oh my gosh, the VFX and then you have a digital character in the room and it's a blue screen. So like you can easily on the day, you have 12 hours, 10 hours, eight hours to shoot. You can be thinking a lot about other things than just the story you're telling. And so I think all those experiences, I was meant to do this movie at this moment in my life. I took my 10 ,000 hours. And so it was great to be able to wield that knowledge coming into here. Yeah, and the ensemble pieces are incredibly complex editorially and musically.

57:34You have choreography, Chris Scott's incredible choreography. You have Foley and people's feet moving. You have vocals, ensemble vocals. You have the lead vocals. And so one of the things that I was really proud of with both of these movies was that we would distribute the click track, the tempo map, to all of the different parts of the sound department. So Nancy Nugent-Title, who was our dialogue sound supervisor, and John Marquis, who supervised sound on the sound effect side and also was one of our mixers, they had access to all of our tempo maps. So what we were able to do was keep everything sort of in lockstep with the tempo, whether it's off-screen sounds that you might hear that correspond to people walking in the distance or more present footsteps in that are on camera or maybe it's crowds that are vocalizing certain chants in a song or even the movement of of cloth on on the costumes all that stuff is it's so important to maintain the musical shape within those big ensemble numbers so that it's affecting every single part of what you're seeing and hearing so that was something that I think helped make these big ensemble numbers feel more kind of realized and convincing musically.

58:57Yeah, and I just have a couple more questions for you guys before we go. But I wanted to ask you, John, I heard that you're working on an adaptation of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. So another musical on the way for you. Is there anything you can tell us about like where y 'all are at in that process and what it's like to work with another incredible Broadway composer and Andrew Lloyd Webber? Yeah, working with Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. That has been like a dream. I mean, Joseph's one of my favorites growing up. And it's a tough one because there's a lot of absurdity in it and the tone is very tough.

59:35And so that's where we're at. We've been, Dana Fox has just been rewriting the script who did Wicked with us. And so we've just been finding that. we're in um we're yeah we've we've i think we've cracked it and we're just sort of i'm just sort of sitting on it for a second as i um release wicked for good and decide what i'm going to do next so i don't know if that's next or what but i am working on a animated movie right now um oh the places you'll go with the seuss estate and warner brothers animation feature animation and uh jj Abrams with Bad Robot and Pasek and Paul are writing the music it's a musical and so working with those two dudes has been like a blast as well so I feel like I'm like the luckiest theater kid in the world that I get to work with all these people and but each one you know when you have what I found with composers is that each one has their also their own philosophy of why music works for them and so i may have my own thoughts and i know that that but we get to influence each other and finding new ways to connect the dots in a movie musical and or animated movie musical and so i think that's been like amazing that we can play and i live in a time where all these greats are here and that i get to know personally and creatively yeah i mean and also i heard you're also working on the Britney Spears adaptation of her, yeah, The Woman and Me, her memoir.

1:01:08I'm wondering, what is it, what is it like to work with Britney? I won't say too much right now, because we're, we're really under wraps of it right now, and we're in the early stages, but I will say I, I, I love the story, and, and I'm very protective of it all. Yeah, I read the book, it was incredible, so I can't wait to see that. Yeah, it's so good. It's an incredible book, it's an incredible book, yeah. To end things off, I have a couple fun little rapid fire questions for you guys. Let's go. And then we'll do our playlist. What is your favorite movie musical of all time? And you are not allowed to say something that you've actually worked on.

1:01:43Singing in the Rain. Like, I don't know how you cannot say Singing in the Rain. So, of course, that. But I think also Chicago is, like, insane. Like, now that I know what it's like to make a movie musical these days, I look at that, I'm like, wow. he really nailed it. It is extraordinary. I love that answer. Okay, what about you, Joe? Yeah, I was going to go with Chicago and West Side Story. Great ones. Which Wicked song gets stuck in your head the most? Well, right now, For Good, for sure, over and over and over again. But usually it's, what is this feeling? True. Yeah, it's got to be Defying Gravity for me and also For Good.

1:02:30is now in my soul and heart forever so it'll always be on repeat in some way Green or pink? John? No, I can't answer that one That's off limits for sure I finally hit the point where I asked a question that's off limits and it's about color Yep, that's it I know better If you could cameo anywhere in both of the Wicked movies where would you insert yourself?

1:03:02I would be standing behind Stephen Schwartz at the gates of the Emerald City. The wizard will see you now. John keeps on taking mine. Okay, I will be the goat, Dr. Dillamond, because he's got such a beautiful, heartbreaking story, and I wish that I could be as good of an actor as that Peter Dinklage slash visual effects goat in our movie. Perfect. That is a great answer. what is one scene from Wicked or Wicked for Good that still gives you chills Oz does in the end of Defying Gravity of course but Defying Gravity I just watched it again it's the first time I've watched it in maybe a long long time and it even overwhelmed me more now than I did back then maybe I was just too in it but now I'm like oh wow I felt like I knew what the audience felt at that moment that we cut out to black I mean it's hard to argue with Defying Gravity when we played it on our final mixing stage before we wrapped the first movie, I remember it ended and John fell off his chair onto the floor.

1:04:01Oh, you're right. You're right. And we were all, I mean, but for this movie, For Good, it makes me cry every time. I mean, maybe I'm sappy, but it just, I will never tire of that song. And the way that it works in this film, it will just break your heart. It's so beautiful. But what's interesting about For Good, and we talked about this a lot, was there are songs that work as musical theater pieces and there are songs that work as like pop songs that are songs within this movie and for good is basically built architecturally like just a song it's like you this is the moment where the two leads come and sing a song and it's very built uh as a straight song and so it's harder to work into the story naturally and so i think that the work that was done in just the little slight details to make it feel like it's emerging from them.

1:04:53And yet it's still the song we know and love was like brilliant inches by our whole sound team from Jack to Andy to everybody on this and Schwartz and everyone, Jeff. What they had to do to break it from what we know is really extraordinary. That is so interesting. Do you have anything to add to that about how you were able to weave for good into the story? I You know, it's about ebbing and flowing and not letting the song feel like a needle drop. You know, you certainly don't want For Good to be a music video in the middle of it. It needs to be the emotional payoff of both movies in a way. I mean, I hope that's accurate.

1:05:38I mean, that's how it feels to me. You know, it feels like score. It feels like score. Yes. Which is crazy to think. Yeah. And it comes in. It comes in. For two singers to hit. That's right. And it emerges so delicately, and it takes a while to get into that kind of pop song feeling that John was alluding to. But even once it gets there, it still feels like part of the fabric of the story, of the emotions, and of the score. And what's beautiful about it, too, is we've planted seeds of For Good throughout movie one and movie two, but very much very little, little things. And then once you do the song and it becomes a part of the fabric of the movie, from then on, it's a part of the score itself.

1:06:21And even in For Good, there's a moment, and I don't want to spoil this too much, but there's inklings of another song that are woven into it. And we had some debates about, hey, is that distracting? Like, you're now in For Good. Like, we are starting For Good. Are you allowed? is that throw the audience off when you hear the three notes of a song you know very well and does that trigger it or does it empower the character are we saying so that's what i mean by blurring the line between the song orchestrations and the score because you cannot just do that in a song but you have space and time to do that in um in in this sequence and so that was that those little touches are just brilliant totally and also just one last thing on this the lyrics are just I don't understand how lyrics are written to begin with.

1:07:11I've never understood that. It's a mystery to me. But you'll be with me like a handprint on my heart. I feel like if I tried to write lyrics for 75 years straight, I would never. And there are so many beautiful lyrics like that in that song and all the other ones. And they just. A sea dropped by a skybird. Oh, my gosh. It's like. Yeah. He's just incredible. Yeah. Anyway, that was the longest rapid fire answer of all time. No, no, no. Okay, guys, this is actually crazy because what you just got into was my next question, which is like, what's a lyric that has really changed you from this film? And I think y 'all both just answered your answer.

1:07:51So great work. That was part of the rapid fire. And the last one is, finish the sentence. Wicked for good is best experienced when you... See it in theaters, in Dolby Atmos, on a huge screen. There we go. With lots of people. with all your friends and strangers. Yes, not at home, not on your iPhone. Maybe even dressed up as one of the characters. Why not? Yes. Yes, the pink and green. People can pick. Y 'all won't pick, but other people can pick. Go to a sing-along version. I don't know what the plan is, but I really hope there's sing-along versions again this time around because some of that footage, I remember sitting in the cutting room with John, actually, and he was showing me some of the footage from the sing-alongs.

1:08:29People went all out, and it was just so joyful to see that. That's so exciting. This is so exciting. I can't wait for this movie to come out. I did get to see a screener, and it was just absolutely fabulous. I mean, it was jam-packed with stuff. I felt like every scene, there was so much going on, and I'm so excited for everyone else to see it. And at the end of every episode of On the Record, I like to ask my guests to help me make a playlist. So we have three prompts, and we need to pick three songs each. So the first question is, what is a song you can no longer gatekeep? I don't know if this is considered a gatekeep because it's probably really well known, but I didn't know it until just recently.

1:09:09And I've just like listened to it over and over again. And that is John Baptiste's Butterfly. It is like the lyrics, the way it's, I don't know, we play it every morning in our household. I have five kids and they're all eating breakfast and it just makes the whole day better. On Haim's Women in Music Part 3, which is I think one of the best records in the past 15 years, there's a song on there that like it took me a while to really like fall in love with and it's all that ever mattered and it's a little bit deeper it's a deeper cut maybe it's actually like one of the top songs on that album I don't think it is I do love that album but I don't think that's you know a single or anything so that's a good pick yeah so I love them love that song yeah great picks okay so second one is a favorite throwback so a song over 10 years old um well i'm listening a lot to uh billy joel she's always a woman to me specifically because i i watched the doc and i did not i i never connected it's just always been a song to me and i just loved that story and that love story in there and i um so i've been listening to that a lot right now i mean honestly i've been listening to one album since i was a child and i've probably listened to it, I don't know, 100 ,000 times, and that is Diva by Annie Lennox, and the song on that album that gets me every time is called Cold.

1:10:29People might not even know that album now, but check it out. It's one of the greatest albums of the past 40 years. I love it. Wow. Okay. And finally, guys, a guilty pleasure.

1:10:42Well, my honest guilty pleasure is this is the best burrito that my children sing in the car all day long, but I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say it makes me ill by NSYNC. I just think I, you know, I was hanging with the fellas, you know, all that whole thing is just gets me hyped. Perfect. Don't tell anyone. Don't tell anyone, please. Okay. I mean, the first thing. No one listens to this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first thing I was going to say was the soundtrack album to Waitress. All the music is by Sara Bareilles and I'm absolutely in love with her but like that's not a guilty pleasure because I genuinely love that musical and I love that show so I guess a more guilty pleasure would be like I dropped my daughter off at school we were listening to Sabrina Carpenter in the car now she gets out of the car she goes to school Sabrina Carpenter's still on in my car and I let it play because Man Child's a great song.

1:11:35Man Child is a good song. You don't play this is the best burrito. I haven't heard that one John. I mean it's a classic now. Wow that is a that is a kid's classic. Well, thank you so much, John M. Chu, Jack Dolman. This has been so much fun. Thank you for coming to On The Record to talk about all things music and Wicked. Thank you, Kristen. This was great. Thank you. Legally, we can't say drinking Storm makes you smarter and more focused. But with zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine, and immunity support, you're smarter and more focused for drinking Storm. Storm, good energy in, good energy out.

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1:13:06another thank you again to jack dolman and john mchue for coming on the show today and sharing all of their insights with us. Up next, we're going to dive into our chart roundup where we will highlight this week's biggest movers and shakers. Here's the Hot 100 Top 10 Countdown for the week of November 8th. Coming in at number 10 this week is Mutt by Leon Thomas. Number 9 this week is I Got Better by Morgan Wallen. Elizabeth Taylor by Taylor Swift comes in at number 8. Bolded by Kehlani comes in at number seven. Number six is Daisies by Justin Bieber. Five is Man I Need by Olivia Dean. Number four this week is Opalite by Taylor Swift.

1:14:03Ordinary by Alex Warren comes in third again this week. Golden by Huntrix from the K-pop Demon Hunter soundtrack comes in at number two again this week. And finally, the song in the top slot this week on the Billboard Hot 100 chart is The Fate of Ophelia by Taylor Swift in its fourth week at number one. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of On the Record. And another big special thank you to my guests this week, Jack Dolman and John M. Chu, where we talked about all things Wicked. It was so much fun. If you liked today's show, please consider hitting us with a rating, a follow, a thumbs up, all those good things.

1:14:43They really help a show like ours to grow and reach new people. Again, I'm your host, Kristen Robinson, and tune in next week for another peek behind the curtain of the music industry. I'll see you then.