Defying Gravity

Defying Gravity: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, and a Song Reborn

A November 2024 movie theater is a particular kind of space. The lights have just gone down, the sound system is running at full capacity, and two of the most technically accomplished singers of their generation are about to perform the most beloved song in Broadway musical history to an audience that has been waiting for this moment for decades. When Wicked finally reached cinema screens, the recording of Defying Gravity that Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande delivered became one of the year's defining musical events.

The Original's Place in Musical Theatre

Defying Gravity was composed by Stephen Schwartz for the Broadway musical Wicked, which opened in 2003 and became one of the most commercially successful musicals in theatre history. The song functions as the Act One finale, the moment when the story's central conflict crystallizes and its protagonist makes the defining choice of her life. In twenty years of productions, countless Elphabas have performed it, but the theatrical recording by Idina Menzel established a standard that the entire culture had absorbed. Asking two contemporary pop artists to inhabit that space was an enormous ask.

Two Voices Built for the Task

The casting of Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda was considered inspired from the moment it was announced. Erivo is one of the most technically formidable theatrical singers working, a performer whose vocal control and emotional range had already won her an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Harriet. Grande, meanwhile, had spent years demonstrating a four-octave range and a classical influence drawn partly from the Broadway tradition she grew up admiring. Their voices in combination on Defying Gravity produced something that critics and audiences found genuinely overwhelming: power meeting delicacy, chest voice meeting head voice, two distinct instruments making a single argument.

The Chart Performance and Its Meaning

The recording debuted at number 44 on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 7, 2024, and maintained chart presence for ten weeks, a remarkable run for a theatrical recording in the streaming era. That durability reflects both the film's commercial success and the specific way the song functioned as a cultural touchpoint during the holiday season. Audiences who saw the film returned to stream the performance, and many who had not yet seen it sought it out after the cultural conversation made ignoring it difficult.

The Film as Cultural Event

Director Jon M. Chu's adaptation of Wicked had been anticipated for years, and the decision to split the story across two films gave the first installment a particular shape: it ends, as the stage show does, at the moment of Elphaba's flight. The ten-week chart run of Defying Gravity suggests audiences kept returning to that moment in audio form, which is what you do with performances that feel historic. More than 4.37 million YouTube views on the official clip represent only a fraction of the total engagement; the song circulated across multiple platform uploads and fan-captured concert footage throughout the holiday season.

Legacy of the Song and the Performance

What made Erivo and Grande's version significant beyond technical quality was the emotional specificity they brought. The song is about choosing authenticity over acceptance, about refusing to live within constraints defined by others' comfort. Both artists, in their public lives, had navigated versions of that choice; their voices in the recording carry the authority of people who understand what the song is actually about from the inside. That alignment between performer biography and material is what separates a great performance from a merely excellent one.

Find the recording and give it the full listening it deserves; this one will still matter in twenty years.

“Defying Gravity” — Cynthia Erivo Featuring Ariana Grande's singular moment on the 2020s charts.