Music biopics get a bad rap, and for many, that reputation is earned. Their story beats are well-trodden—a troubled childhood drives a charming outsider to a creative life of scrappy turmoil, before they get their big break. Cue a montage of the glitz of showbiz followed by a descent into drugs/sex/ego, rock bottom, and a late-stage comeback. The films are crammed full of Easter eggs for devoted fans and hackneyed scenes of divine inspiration striking at the piano.
More insidiously, as private equity firms gobble up individual stars’ life and music rights in recent years, music biopics are looking an awful lot like pretty ways to exploit intellectual property while accruing interest for rights holders. But since their inception, one thing is certain: The proliferation of the music biopic isn’t slowing down. Last year alone saw the release of A Complete Unknown (Bob Dylan), Back to Black (Amy Winehouse), One Love (Bob Marley), Maria (Maria Callas), and Better Man (Robbie Williams). With upcoming projects—including Julia Garner as Madonna, Zendaya as Ronnie Spector, Selena Gomez as Linda Ronstadt, Daisy Edgar-Jones as Carole King, and four separate Beatles movies directed by Sam Mendes (starring Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Barry Keoghan, and Joseph Quinn)—we may actually be living in peak music biopic times.
As the latest to join the family, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere starring Jeremy Allen White, hits theaters, we’re looking back at the good, the bad, and the ugly across the music biopics that brought us here.
The Good
I’m Not There, 2007 – Bob Dylan
Stream it on Tubi
How do you make a film about rock music’s best known and most opaque figure? Cast him as six different actors, of course. Todd Haynes’s slippery film presented Bob Dylan’s changeable personality and career as an ensemble piece starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger (in his final role), Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, and Ben Whishaw as fragmentary renderings of the musician’s personas and inspirations. In it, Bob Dylan is, yes, a newsboy cap-wearing folkie penning protest songs in the East Village, but he is also a little Black boy named Woody Guthrie riding the rails and an actor playing a newsboy cap-wearing folkie in a film. Dylan makes music steeped in myth: the American myth, his own mythic back story, and the mythic evolution of 20th-century rock. I’m Not There puts it all in a blender, and the result is more true to life than any straightforward rendition ever could be.
Coal Miner’s Daughter, 1980 – Loretta Lynn
Rent it on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV
Before this, Michael Apted was mostly known for his documentary work, and it shows in this color adaptation of Loretta Lynn’s rise from rural poverty to country music superstardom. Rather than hitting a few well-trodden story beats, the film is naturalistic and well-observed. Sissy Spacek won her first Oscar for the role, alternating between wide-eyed naiveté and firecracker wit, while Tommy Lee Jones sports a carrot top wig as her domineering husband, whom she married at 15. The story itself is already gripping, but it’s Lynn’s steel string voice and feisty lyrics that make the film.
Sid and Nancy, 1986 – Sid Vicious/Sex Pistols
Rent it on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV
The soft focus magical realism of cult classic director Alex Cox (Repo Man) was the perfect match for the burn-fast-burn-bright last days of the Sex Pistols. Although its lasting legacy are the many bad impressions of Nancy Spungen howling at Sid Vicious from the floor of the Chelsea Hotel, the film is remarkably energetic and empathetic, capturing the youthful kick of the early punk scene. The foul-mouthed, graffiti-spraying, heroin-shooting lovers know they’re going down, though Cox knows better than to pretend that it’s in a blaze of glory. Unlike its late protagonists, the film was an early calling card for generational talent. Sid and Nancy put Gary Oldman on the map, you can catch a 22-year-old Courtney Love in a few scenes, and it was also an early breakout for Roger Deakins, a towering cinematographer best known for his collaborations with the Coen brothers and Denis Villeneuve. His moody shots of London, Paris, and New York capture the grit and alienation of the era.
Lady Sings the Blues, 1972 – Billie Holiday
Stream it on YouTube
By 1972, Billie Holiday and Diana Ross were perhaps the two most famous and widely revered female vocalists of all time. They orbited each other as a sort of yin and yang: on one hand, Billie with her ability to plumb the depths of her own tortured life and transform it into aching jazz laments, and on the other hand, Diana, who plays Holiday in this Sidney J. Furie-directed flick, with her incandescent joy and glamour embodied in pop’s bright blaze. At the time, some, like film critic Pauline Kael, found the tension between jazz’s nuance and pop’s unbridled optimism to be in direct conflict. Today, however, the powerful friction between the two singers and their artistic personas makes Lady Sings the Blues a fascinating artifact.
What’s Love Got To Do With It, 1993 – Tina Turner
Rent it on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV
The tawdry culture of ’80s and ’90s American tabloid journalism had made a veritable feast out of the tumultuous and often abusive relationship between rock ‘n roll dynamo Tina Turner and her manipulative husband-manager Ike Turner. But this adaptation, starring Angela Bassett and pencil-mustached Laurence Fishburne at the top of their games, always venerates Tina’s electric stage act even as it spirals into the most lurid details of her marriage. While the audience must confront the depths of the smooth-talking Turner’s depravity, the film stays glossy, kinetic, and propulsive, just like Tina. It’s a testament to the musician as both a powerhouse performer and a survivor.
Selena, 1997 – Selena
Stream on HBO Max or Paramount+
This film—made just two years after the 23-year-old queen of Tejano music was shot and killed by the president of her fan club—helped elevate Selena to near-sainthood. The bubbly, playful music of the Texas-born Latina singer, presaged the worldwide cumbia and reggaeton booms. And then there was J.Lo. Just as Selena helped cement the real-life singer in the annals of pop music history, so too did it anoint Jennifer Lopez as one of pop’s reigning superstars. At the time, Lopez was best known as one of the Fly Girl dancers on In Living Color. And although Lopez’s debut album wouldn’t be released for three more years, Selena left no doubt in the viewers’ minds that one day soon, she would be singing and dancing onstage for thousands of screaming fans.
Better Man, 2024 – Robbie Williams
Stream on Amazon Prime Video or MGM+
What better star is there for our first boy band biopic than a literal singing and dancing monkey? It’s not exactly a subtle metaphor, but then again, neither was the rise-crash-out-recover career of Robbie Williams. Perhaps it’s the gaping chasm between the Brits (for whom Take That was a cultural touchstone of the 1990s) and the Americans (who asked, “Who the hell is Robbie Williams?”) that makes the film feel so fresh and approachable. Watching a monkey party with Oasis in a red Adidas tracksuit, or dive headfirst into a mountain of cocaine, is a good time any night of the week. But Williams’s simian appearance also plays a meaningful double role: that of a youthful hooligan who sees himself as an animal among men and that of a culture that turns its nose up at a music that it sees as unevolved.
The Bad
Walk the Line, 2005 – Johnny Cash
Rent on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV
James Mangold’s depiction of the Man in Black, starring Joaquin Phoenix, set the template for the 21st century music biopic so decisively that it inspired countless knock offs and even its own Judd Apatow-produced parody less than two years later. Reese Witherspoon elevated the time-honored music biopic role of The Wife into something sharp and compelling, and as a result, she nabbed her first Oscar for her performance as June Carter. The religious and socially conscious dimension of Johnny Cash’s music takes a back seat in favor of his grand romance with June (not much of which is embellished, Johnny Cash really did propose to her onstage in 1968). The sweetness of their relationship and the strength of their performances carries this movie forward, but its enduring legacy will still be the hell wrought by its legion of imitators.
Rocketman, 2019 – Elton John
Rent on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV
Unlike many other music biopics, Rocketman is liberated from the conceit that songs and their lyrics must come from the emotional lives of their writers. Elton John didn’t write his own lyrics; that honor belonged to his longtime musical partner Bernie Taupin. At its best, Rocketman is a love letter to their friendship and collaboration. After all, music is a collective medium. Taron Egerton, who plays John, is mostly game, but even he can’t rescue the film from its familiar clichés. For every lovingly recreated stage costume and raucous musical number, there’s an equally flamboyant descent into addiction—everything from alcohol and cocaine to shopping and sex. It’s well-trodden territory, but for those seeking a sing-along worthy of a theater kid’s birthday party, Rocketman delivers in spades.
The Runaways, 2010 – Joan Jett and Cherie Currie
Rent on Amazon Prime Video
The pros: Kristen Stewart with a Joan Jett mullet, Kristen Stewart teaching her bandmate how to masturbate with a showerhead, Kristen Stewart in general. The cons: the tone is not quite hazy enough to make up for the fact that not much of this actually happened. Director Floria Sigismondi is best known for her work as a music video director for stars such as David Bowie, the White Stripes, Fiona Apple, Katy Perry, and Yves Tumor, and she’s probably closer to the subject matter of the film than any other director on this list. But her unwillingness to engage with the specter of Kim Fowley, the band’s Svengali mastermind who raped band member Jackie Fox in 1975, leaves a crater in the center of a story about rock’s first band of teen girls brandishing guitars.
The Ugly
The Doors, 1991 – Jim Morrison
Oliver Stone is known for many things: a slavish devotion to the truth is not one of them. The Doors came in a loose triptych of his movies presenting mythic visions of America’s recent history in the 1960s, alongside Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. His vision of Jim Morrison was a sign of the times: the Lizard King, what Joan Didion once described as “a missionary of apocalyptic sex.” But from 2025’s vantage point, the whole thing comes across as mind-numbing. The countercultural allure of Morrison’s rebel charisma delivers little more than surface-level stoned ramblings. Fans of the Doors will find Val Kilmer firing on all cylinders as Morrison, but the overall effect is a tiresome slog of booze, drugs, and a Boomer’s half-remembered stories from the heyday of Haight-Ashbury. As Roger Ebert said at the time of its release: “Watching this movie is like being stuck at a bar with an obnoxious drunk when you’re not drinking.” Bonus points go to Kyle MacLachlan, who stuns in some truly heinous wigs.
Bohemian Rhapsody, 2018 – Freddie Mercury/Queen
Stream it on Hulu or String TV
Bohemian Rhapsody is the inspiring true story about how, despite being unable to produce a single recognizably human expression, you too could win Best Actor for portraying one of music’s greatest showmen. In the years since it came out, the film has become shorthand for the music biopic’s follies and excesses. Maybe it was the ending, Queen’s era-defining 1985 Live Aid performance, slavishly recreated shot-for-shot to little cinematic effect. Maybe it was Rami Malek’s unmemorable performance as Freddie, which amounted to little more than a pair of false teeth and a strange reticence to engage with Mercury’s sexuality. Even if it wasn’t directed by one of Hollywood’s most notorious sex pests, Bohemian Rhapsody would still be near universally reviled for its complete lack of plot, character development, or obstacles of any kind.
Elvis, 2022 – Elvis
Rent it on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV.
Audiences are advised to take a dramamine before any Baz Luhrmann movie, but Elvis may take the top prize for motion sickness-inducing whips, pans, and cuts. Featuring a truly Lovecraftian performance from Tom Hanks and an affected vocal warble that followed Austin Butler even on the press tour, Elvis appears to have infected its cast and crew with a powerful brain parasite that also extends to its audience. For what it’s worth, Luhrmann makes an honest attempt to engage with the racial dynamics that Elvis both appropriated to great success and faced real backlash for in the form of a moral/sexual panic in the 1950s. But, like a runaway train, the film continues to barrel down the track of its 2 hour and 40 minute runtime long after it’s run out of steam.
A Complete Unknown, 2024 – Bob Dylan
Stream it on Disney+ or Hulu
Mangold’s second whirl at a music biopic, two decades after Walk the Line, is a completely watchable film in which beautiful people wear beautiful vintage clothing and sing some of popular music’s most enduring songs. But, as the best looking and most serviceable entry in the music biopic’s recent speculative boom, it is also its most insidious. Mangold buys into and repackages the hype of Bob Dylan without lending much thought to what happens when we treat artists as prophets. Even less defined are Dylan’s collaborators: Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Alan Lomax, whose music took on a much stronger political valence with its insistence on collectivity and action. There Dylan is, a lone American troubadour who, Forrest Gump-like, stumbles through the most clichéd defining moments of the ’60s, not so much to critique the dissolution of mid-century consumerist culture but, instead, to confirm the artistic supremacy of the One Great Male Genius.
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