Why His Songs Make People Cry
Stephen Schwartz knows how to hit you right in the feelings. When he was little, he sat at the piano and played the same few notes from Beethoven again and again. Tears ran down his face. He still remembers it clearly. “It was so embarrassing,” he says with a laugh. The music came from a guy who died almost two hundred years ago, but it still felt like Beethoven was talking straight to him. That moment never left Schwartz. He tries to put that same honest feeling into every song he writes.
How “Wicked” Came to Life
Everybody knows Wicked now. It opened on Broadway back in 2003—that’s twenty-two years ago already. The show tells the story of the two witches from The Wizard of Oz before Dorothy showed up. Elphaba is the green one who gets called wicked. Glinda is the pretty, popular one. Schwartz wrote the music and the words. He says the whole thing felt like a huge risk.
Opening night was scary. Schwartz didn’t even go to the theater. He stayed away because he gets too nervous. He hates waiting for the reviews to come in. Most composers go to their own opening parties. Not him. But the next morning, the phones started ringing. People loved it. Wicked is still running today and has made more than a billion dollars just on Broadway. Crazy, right?
The Secret to Writing Songs That Stick
Schwartz has a simple rule for lyrics: tell the truth and make it rhyme. That’s it. Sounds easy, but it isn’t. Look at “Defying Gravity.” Elphaba sings it at the end of the first act. She’s mad, hurt, and done pretending to be someone she’s not. Kids sing that song at school graduations. Grown-ups play it when they quit bad jobs. It became an anthem because it feels real.
He also wrote “Popular” for Glinda. It’s funny and bubbly, but you can still hear that Glinda wants people to like her more than anything. Schwartz says if he can be honest about what a character feels—even if it’s silly or mean—then the audience will feel it too.
The Crazy Early Years
Schwartz started super young. He went to Juilliard while he was still in high school. By age 23 he had Godspell on Broadway. That show used Jesus stories but made them fun and modern. People went nuts for it. Two years later came Pippin, about a prince looking for something exciting to do with his life. Then The Magic Show opened with a real magician on stage.
At 27 years old he had three shows running at the same time in New York. Most people never get even one. He says it made his head spin. “I got way too full of myself,” he admits now. Parties every night, big ego, the whole thing.
When Things Went Wrong
After the big hits came some big flops. Four in a row, actually. Working, Rags, The Baker’s Wife, Children of Eden—none of them ran long. Critics were rough. Schwartz says those years hurt, but they taught him a lot. He learned how to work with other people better. He learned not to believe his own hype.
Taking a Break from Broadway
In the early 1990s he walked away from theater for a while. He even started studying to become a therapist. Can you imagine? The guy who wrote “No Good Deed” almost became a counselor instead. He needed a break from the pressure. That time off helped him calm down and remember why he loved making music in the first place.
Going to Hollywood
When he came back to writing songs, he went to movies first. He did Pocahontas for Disney and won an Oscar for “Colors of the Wind.” Then The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Then Enchanted. Three Oscars total. Not bad for a break, huh?
But Broadway kept calling him home.
Still Going Strong at 77
These days Schwartz is 77 and still busy. He fixes old shows, writes new ones, and helps young writers. He says he feels lucky that people keep singing his songs long after he’s gone. “They still let me do this,” he jokes. And they do—because every time a kid belts “Defying Gravity” in her bedroom or a high school puts on Godspell, Stephen Schwartz is still there in the music.
Sometimes I catch myself humming “Day by Day” from Godspell on the subway. Never gets old. That’s the trick—he writes songs that feel like they belong to everybody.
