A short clip teasing Grande’s rendition of the showstopper mistook the lyric “proper ploys” for “proper poise”
Ariana Grande’s rendition of the Wicked favorite “Popular” got its first tease with a short lyric video — which led to Grande herself hopping in the comments of the upcoming movie’s official account with a quick spell check.
“Popular” is one of the most famous numbers from Wicked, sung by Galinda (the future Good Witch) when she decides to give Elphaba (the future Wicked Witch of the West) a makeover to help her fit in at Shiz University. The effervescent number is packed with punchy little lyrical turns — penned by musical theater legend Stephen Schwartz — though one of the first seems to have caused some serious confusion: “I’ll teach you the proper ploys/When you talk to boys/Little ways to flirt and flounce.”
In the new lyric video, “proper ploys” is written out as “proper poise,” which Grande pointed out in the comments on Instagram: “it’s ‘ploys’ !!!!!!” (Though there were obviously no hard feelings, as she also added: “I love you @wickedmovie.”)
To be fair to whoever made the lyric video, this is both an easy and unsurprising mistake to make. Neither Grande nor the song’s originator, Kristin Chenoweth, annunciate the “L” in “ploys” particularly hard. And if you were to search around for confirmation of the lyrics on the internet, you’d find several seemingly reputable sites that do list the lyric as “poise” (including Genius, Apple Music, and some sheet music for sale online.)
Just to be absolutely certain, we dug up on Discogs scans of the lyric booklet from the original Wicked cast recording CD from 2003, which definitely lists the lyrics as “proper ploys” — not that we’d ever have any reason to doubt Grande herself!
Wicked (part one) is slated to hit theaters on Nov. 22, with part two arriving on Nov. 21, 2025 (soundtracks for both halves of the film will be released concurrently). Grande stars as Galinda, opposite Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. The movie was directed by Jon M. Chu and also stars Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Bowen Yang, and Peter Dinklage.
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