Special: Wicked

on the first song I ever really loved

When I was seven, my mom took me to New York to see Wicked on Broadway. We went to the American Girl doll store, and to Empire State Building, and probably saw the Statue of Liberty, although I can’t remember now. We got hot candied nuts from a vendor in Central Park and I still love the smell of sugar and pine trees, to this day. I remember it was winter. We went to the Burlington Coat factory the week before the trip so I could pick out a heavy coat; living in Arizona, I had never needed one before. The last day, as we were hailing a taxi to take us to the airport (you could still hail a taxi back then), it started to snow. That was the first time I had ever seen snow falling from the sky.

To say that seeing Wicked changed my life would be an understatement. For three years after that night, I listened exclusively to the soundtrack and nothing else. I decided I was going to be a Broadway actress. I begged my parents to repaint my room Wicked themed, and I had lime green walls for years afterwards, with purple and black accents and the signed poster of the Broadway cast hanging above my bed like a crucifix. I might as well have been worshipping the musical, as my devotion to it was nothing short of fanatical.

I had a burned CD copy of the soundtrack, made for me by my mother’s business partner, who had written her favorite tracks on the disc: 3, 8, 11, 18. These were Elphaba’s best songs, and from the beginning I had identified with Elphaba—tragic heroine, misunderstood, strongly motivated by animal welfare. Idina Menzel was my first crush, although I don’t think I understood it at the time. I memorized her harmonies on the soundtrack and sang them faithfully, with the correct inflections and cutoffs.

Later in life, I would discover a musical identity rooted in indie and alternative music that would eclipse my love for Wicked, but for many years I was immersed in this single piece of media. When I woke up in the morning and got ready for school, I hit play on the boom box in my room that was my singular vehicle for listening to music, and there was only one CD ever loaded in the player. Though I left Wicked behind as I progressed into my teens, and although I listened to it maybe once a year instead of once a day, I realized today that it never really left me.

Upon hearing the first chords of the opening theme, sitting in the theater to see the movie adaptation of Wicked, I started to cry. I cried on and off for the nearly three hours of screen time, which induced a headache and left me feeling rather wrung out. I cried at the loveliness of the costuming, and the care of the two lead actors so obvious in their performances.

I didn’t even really like the movie that much; I had qualms with the changes made to the vocal performances (too many runs) and disliked Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum in their roles. I thought there were too few aerial shots of the choreography, which to me is one of the best opportunities of the movie musical. I was never going to think it was perfect, because it wasn’t a bootleg video of the original show.

I was surprised to find myself crying, but upon reflection I’ve realized there was no way I could have been so obsessed with something and had it leave no permanent mark on me. In my latest version of Currently, I wrote about how I love sweeping, emotional string pieces like those in the Phantom Thread soundtrack—that’s surely a remnant of my Wicked years. I knew every single word, and was acutely aware of the changes made to the vocal melodies—something taking up that much space in my brain can’t be considered a phase.

“Defying Gravity” was the first song I ever really loved. I’m sure there were others that I liked subconsciously (my mom had an Eagles greatest hits CD in the car that she played a lot), but it wasn’t until I saw Wicked that I felt for the first time I was choosing something entirely my own to listen to. The development of my personal taste was to me the most important aspect of my becoming a person; knowing what I liked and disliked gave me intellectual agency, helped me to articulate who I wanted to be.

I understand now that these songs are still at the core of my musical identity, and everything else has been built on top of and around them. It’s relieving actually; I sometimes feel that my consumption is based around passing phases, none of them becoming integral to me. I don’t find myself thinking about or listening to Wicked all that much anymore, but the music is necessary to my understanding of myself. I loved it and it shaped me.

Sitting in the theater yesterday, crying over a movie I knew was only sort of good, I accepted that I am just an amalgamation of all the things I’ve ever loved, even when I was a child. It felt good to surrender to this idea, and to realize that it has always been true, no matter what my Spotify Wrapped or any other metric says about me year over year.

I’ve been struggling with music lately, trying to find a consistent listening practice, and crying over “Defying Gravity” made me realize that these integral parts of oneself never really go away. I’m still that girl, seeing Wicked for the first time, realizing that my life is never going to be the same.