The definitive ranking of Anna Kendrick's musical performances
Between her new movie musical The Last Five Years, all those trailer for Pitch Perfect 2 and her upcoming performance at the Oscars, it seems all Anna Kendrick is doing lately is singing. With Five Years on demand and the Oscars this Sunday, we figured it was as good a time as any to officially and definitively rank Kendrick's many musical performances, from Cups to Camp.
10. Time After Time, Up in the Air
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m22NaRb1APU
Karaoke, in any form, is never super pretty, but this scene is everything we love about time-honored drunk past-time. Plus Kendrick is way better at karaoke than you are (be honest with yourself). This is the stuff that Oscar nominations are made of, guys.
9. Life upon the Wicked Stage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LJ8jrj2FVc
Like a true theater kid, Kendrick started young. Please enjoy her performing alongside the kit-kat girls from Cabaret at only age 13. She kills it, and her pigtails are amazing.
8. On the Steps of the Palace and others, Into the Woods
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgvRNRQccV8
The only bad thing about Kendrick in Into the Woods is that Cinderella is kind of the most boring character. Kendrick nailed her wordy songs like On the Steps of the Palace, but they're just not the most exciting in the show.
7. It's Not Where You Start, It's How You Finish, 2013 Kennedy Center Honors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88GNBzrhlZI
Kendrick really got her Broadway on to honor Shirley MacLaine. It's got all the trappings of a classic song and dance number: She wears red and heels, she dances and she even has backup dancers. She also gets bonus points for entertaining the President.
6. Cups on Letterman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vP1Z5tmww4
Her performance of the song in the movie is fun but the really impressive version of this song is the impromptu one she did on The Late Show. She drops that plastic cup like it's a mic.
5. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Christmas in Washington
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMvW4DY3ed4
Kendrick really knows how to entertain the Obama clan. At 2013's Christmas in Washington she blew the crowd away (and probably brought a tear to many an eye) with her rendition of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.
4. No Diggity, Pitch Perfect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q573_hDhTbE
With respect to all the other songs she sings in the movie, we never love Kendrick more than when she busts out rapping in the riff-off. She follows up by leading the group in an awesome a capella version of the Blackstreet song. You're welcome, indeed.
3. For Good with Kristin Chenoweth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiImvQTI5ZE
Not only do you have Anna Kendrick singing with Broadway queen Kristin Chenoweth, but they're singing the most heartbreaking song from Wicked. This performance makes us desperately want to see Kendrick play Elphaba someday. She'd look good in green.
2. Ladies Who Lunch, Camp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8y9pNqjtb0
This movie -- about a bunch of teens and some pre-teens at a musical theater summer camp -- made us fall in love with Kendrick long before you saw her in Twilight or Up in the Air. Her character is a conniving schemer who, in this scene (which contains NSFW language) has drugged the lead in the musical so she can take over the part, mid-show. She's also so young and she absolutely kills a song that the great
made famous.
1. Every song, The Last Five Years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtG2DJnLBEk
Kendrick turned in her best performance to-date in the intimate movie musical, where she plays Cathy, a struggling actress in a doomed relationship with a successful novelist. In the film Cathy's story movies backwards while Jamie's movies forwards, which only makes her songs all the more devastating, like I Can Do Better Than That, where she sings about the life she wants and we know she's not going to get with Jamie. Don't even get us started on Still Hurting.
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