The 20 Best Musical Biopics Ever Made
There’s a reason VH1 was able to film so many episodes of Behind the Music in its time. There is almost always drama to be found in the stories of successful musicians—moments of tragedy and triumph that any successful artist seems to experience in abundance. We love them for it, even when their stories seem more like cautionary tales, which is why we turn a lot of them into movies.
In biographical dramas about musicians, we often see stories of addiction and recovery, as well as tormented souls whose only solace is in their art. Maybe it’s because the lives and careers of many musicians follow similar trajectories; maybe it’s because these are stories that filmmakers are good at telling; and maybe it’s because those are the stories we want to see. Regardless, we’ve built a mythology around musicians’ lives to the point where we’re almost surprised when an artist’s life somehow doesn’t fit with it: taking care of his mental health and hardly feeling like a rock star. In a way, movies taught us to think this way and left us with the unsettling idea that real artists need to be tormented and live lives that are at least a little bit tragic. There’s enough of that in just about every musical biopic, but the best ones offer a different, deeper perspective—viewing their characters’ lives and careers with a little more humanity and thoughtfulness, and veering off narrative tropes even when it’s convenient. life truth.