When the sing-along screenings of “Depraved” go down starting Christmas Day, I’ll be there — however not as a result of I’ve any intention of personally elevating my voice in music. (Or perhaps I’ll take part simply with Dr. Dillamond, the goat professor, whose glottal peculiarities in all probability come closest to the sounds I may produce.) I do have a pure curiosity about what luck a full home of followers could have in singing together with musical-theater songs this subtle… this stuffed with stops and begins and sudden shifts from main to minor chords. There’ll absolutely be some skilled singers and actors filling the AMC seats who can sustain with these tunes. For the remainder of us, there might come a realization: I’m not that lady, and doubtless neither are you.

So what different cause is there to look ahead to the official multiplex sing-alongs, if not, like, singing alongside? That’s simple: the subtitles.

Which is to say: The songs in “Depraved” are so good — a number of the finest that musical theater has ever produced, to my thoughts — that there’s a profit in having fun with a setting that permits you to focus in on the songcraft with out having your consideration waylaid by all of the visible distractions the movie may be very understandably offering. As a 20-year aficionado of “Depraved” as a present, my solely downside with “Depraved” as a film is how director John Chu and editor Myron Kerstein are generally redirecting our consideration to one thing else charming or dazzling that’s taking place on display, when what I most need is two-and-a-half hours of nonstop closeups of Ariana Grande or Cynthia Erivo delivering traditional lyrics. This isn’t a severe criticism, on my half; I get that it’s a film musical. However I’ll be happy to see each certainly one of lyrics popping up on the underside of cinema screens, come Dec. 25. As a result of for a choose subset of “Depraved” followers, the star isn’t actually Erivo or Grande, grand as they each are — it’s Stephen Schwartz.

In fact, there’s a technique to have the crux of the expertise I’m anticipating with out ready for Christmas. It’s to stream or purchase “Depraved: The Soundtrack” whereas settling in at Genius.com or another lyric website to comply with the bouncing ball, because it had been. Even when you really feel such as you’ve gotten the essential grist of the lyrics by the theatrical presentation, there’s loads of richness and nuance that’s simple to overlook amid the cross-cutting, CGI, razzle-dazzle and diva-ness of all of it. The album places an additional exclamation level on Schwartz’s uncommon brilliance as each melodist and lyricist, a la Sondheim. It’s not heresy to say that Schwartz appears like a populist Sondheim with what he did with “Depraved.” The entire rating is darkish, convoluted, unwieldy and subversive … and if it generally comes out as one thing that feels to individuals like bubblegum, that’s simply additional testifies to the massiveness of the accomplishment.

The primary and most elementary factor to say in regards to the soundtrack is that they didn’t blow it. You don’t have to make use of an excessive amount of of your creativeness to consider how a rating like this might have been egregiously up to date. (Increase your hand when you imagined for a second that the Ozdust Ball may have adopted an EDM beat for a number of bars. It doesn’t.) With Schwartz himself co-producing the album with Greg Wells (“Best Showman”) and authentic music-director/arranger Stephen Oremus, it merely appears like what the legit model would if it had one thing like double the pit measurement. And for a younger viewers of budding theater youngsters, it’s going to open them up for good (no pun meant) to the sound in addition to type of conventional Broadway, even with content material which may really feel to them as contemporary as a mixture of Taylor Swift and at present’s headlines.

There’s not a lot that Grande and Erivo try this doesn’t squarely comply with the template established by Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel twenty years in the past. However their vocal performances nonetheless handle to sound shocking in small and essential methods. The epic opening quantity, “No One Mourns the Depraved,” permits Grande to run a hell of a gamut — foretelling the moments of each dumb-blonde comedy and operatic tragedy she’ll get to hit thoughout the length of the rating. I knew she may go high-and-nasal within the pursuit of mirth (hey, I noticed “Sam & Cat”), however listening to her repeat the fully ironic line “Excellent news” at full Sarah Brightman sopranic power is a direct tip-off she’ll be nailing the complete vary of stuff to come back, too.

Erivo takes longer to completely show herself, by design. Truly, she holds again sufficient that it’s not until midway by “Defying Gravity” that it appears like she’s giving it her full belt. Though the film has already given her “The Wizard and I” as a showstopper a complete lot sooner than that, Erivo appears to be holding just a bit of her full energy in reserve, for the second when she’s totally woke up. The brilliance of these songs as first-act twins is that “The Wizard and I” is a traditional “I would like” music, whereas “Gravity” has to go above and past it as — actually — an I don’t need music. Erivo and people working together with her on the vocals have been sensible right here: You’ve acquired to carry somewhat again, even when it’s simply 5%, when you might have in all probability the best middle-finger quantity in Broadway historical past on the horizon.

Whereas all of us look forward to that, what pleasures Erivo gives in a number of the build-up numbers, by having numerous low-ley, conversational and even naïve-sounding vocal moments that set up her as a lovable harmless earlier than she’s a righteously pissed goddess. Having simply reaffirmed the case for “Defying Gravity” as an all-time corker, which Erivo delivers flawlessly, is it bizarre to say that I reserve a fair barely larger fondness for her tender rendition of “I’m Not That Woman”?

Even whether it is, right here’s making the case for “I’m Not That Woman” as “Depraved’s” sleeper music, the one which’s by no means going to be as uber-popular as… effectively, , however will knock you down flat when you hear it on the proper, forlorn time in your life. Its mid-first-act stage placement, or mid-movie right here, marks it as a time-passer for some individuals, near fully un-integral with regards to advancing the plot. By Schwartz’s requirements, it’s easy and un-ambitious, being the one music in the whole rating with no single key change, not to mention multiples. It’s additionally the one one which doesn’t embrace the slightest little bit of narrative data, interpolations of different themes, or some other complicating elements holding it from being a stand-alone. And standing alone is what it’s about, all proper. You don’t even should be a Swiftie to bask within the emo grief of strains like “Don’t want, don’t begin / Wishing solely wounds the guts.” Enjoying this ballad for all of the light fatalism it’s price, Erivo is 100% That Woman.

Different songs bear singling out. Jonathan Bailey does a high-quality job of sliding down the floor of issues with “Dancing Via Life,” which — in certainly one of “Depraved’s” many usurpings of expectations — appears to be setting Fiyero as much as be a Gaston- or Prince Hans-style hunk-villain. Earlier than that rug will get pulled to present him his humanity, he offers callow title. And “Life’s extra painless for the brainless” (and the follow-up “inconsiderate/fraughtless” coupling) can be line even when Schwartz weren’t foreshadowing his destiny within the subsequent act/film. The revolving library units throughout this sequence are a marvel of manufacturing design, however one other instance of how badly you must hear the soundtrack by itself to catch each little bit of the lyrics’ amusing nihilism.

“What Is This Feeling?” delivers two issues everybody needs: it’s a patter music, or as shut to 1 as “Depraved” will get — and, extra essential, it’s the primary probability to see how effectively Grande and Erivo harmonize as frenemies, earlier than the a lot heavier vocal pas de deux they do in debating the deserves of “Defying Gravity.” (Spoiler alert forward.) Then, the originators of that music, Menzel and Chenoweth, present up in new verses Schwartz has penned to afford them a celebrated cameo in “One Quick Day.” Schwartz’s all-new extra compositions received’t come until Half 2, however the interstitial bit he added right here presents omen for greater musical surprises in a 12 months.

“Widespread” has that overt Ronald Reagan allusion that everyone picked up on when the present first opened, however that few newcomers to the music in all probability would now, 20 years later — the reference to “Nice Communicators,” who come up for point out by Galinda as being extra highly effective than brilliant. It’s only a passing little bit of political subtext, embedded nearly unnoticeably within the frothiest quantity, a joke that already had somewhat mud on it when it first appeared, whereas everybody’s targeted on Ariana Grande being fairly — and fairly spectacular — in pink.

However the opening and shutting numbers of Half 1 of “Depraved”? That is music that’s so inherently political, these bookends virtually depend as protest songs. “Defying Gravity” is a paean to activism, as Glinda and Elphaba debate after which sorrowfully settle their variations throughout the complacency/threat divide. Right here, it’s as deeply transferring and stirring as ever — a music for anybody who ever needed to make the acutely aware choice in life to take the pink tablet and cope with the implications, or admired another person who did.

But the music that all the time will get me probably the most is the one which’s nearly innocuously hidden in plain sight proper on the outset: “No One Mourns the Depraved.” On first hear, it appears like a regular, pretty innocuous musical scene-setter, even when, watching the movie, that Wicker Girl being arrange for burning does look ominious. On second or third hear, and past, it will probably really feel devastating. Schwartz and his collaborators are framing the story with an Ozthat’s populated by an offended, self-righteous, deluded and even bloodthirsty mob… led by a girl who’s going together with the nice lie, in hopes of finally rebuilding a land that fell into genocide and fascism underneath corrupt management. Gentle-hearted vacation fare to allow us to neglect all about America’s issues, proper?

It’s in “No One Mourns the Depraved” that we get the rating at its most haunting, with a solid of seeming 1000’s calling for retribution whereas Grande rolls by piercing excessive notes, pretending to place her approving stamp on the nationwide travesty earlier than her. If this doesn’t offer you a chill, you’re not likely listening. However who’s, at the start of a movie, as coats and popcorn are nonetheless being shuffled and a film has barely begun to disclose its playing cards?

That’s yet one more method through which “Depraved: The Soundtrack” turns into an important post-movie hear, to actually absorb all of the groundwork Schwartz and firm have laid in foreshadowing what is definitely at the very least as a lot a sociopolitical tragedy as a fantasy musical-comedy. It’s the power to embody all these components, so masterfully, that makes “Depraved” not simply the best music rating of our time (or at the very least tied with “Hamilton” for that) however one of many greats of all time.

And hear, when you simply need to forego the darker, societally allegorical stuff and simply spin “Widespread” over and over and over till you’ve worn the grooves off the stream, that’s OK, too. We’ve all been there. And because of how effectively Erivo and Grande ship this materials, we’ll keep in that female-friendship-trumps-the whole lot mode lots longer. See you on the sing-along.