The 10 Best Music Biopics of the Last 10 Years, Ranked

When future generations look back on the 2022 Oscars, heads will be scratched over why Todd Field’s TÁR, a rich, darkly fun, and often challenging portrayal of Lydia Tár, the fictional conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, managed to lose five separate Oscar categories to Everything Everywhere All at Once. It deserves a mention on this list for creating a character so fully realised (and so phenomenally portrayed by Cate Blanchett) that a good portion of its audience at the time were surprised to learn it wasn’t based on someone real. This phenomenon carried over into the memesphere and even inspired an eerily convincing Twitter (X) account. The movie ended, but Lydia Tár lives. 

With a commanding central performance by Kingsley Ben-Adir and strong supporting parts for Lashana Lynch (The Day of the Jackal) and James Norton (Eternity), it’s surprising that Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Bob Marley: One Love didn’t make that much of an impact upon release in 2024.

The film was a modest hit, but the critics were sceptical about Green’s cliched approach to Marley’s life, which, it’s fair to say, was anything but straightforward. Whatever the case, the performances are as good a reason as any to see it; and if you were a fan of Green’s previous outing, King Richard, there’s a good chance you’ll be into this one, too. 

Having been introduced to Marisa Abela via her role as Yasmin Kara-Hanani in HBO’s Industry, I wasn’t sure if the actress was the right choice to play Amy Winehouse, the proud daughter of an Essex taxi driver who rose like a rocket in the early ‘00s before tragically crashing back down to earth.

As it turns out, those concerns were unfounded: Abela was the best thing about Back to Black, Sam-Taylor Johnson’s 2024 biopic—even if the film itself never quite rises to the occasion (a better look at the singer’s life can be found in Asif Kapadia’s documentary, Amy). Come to this one for Abela’s performance, but stick around for Jack O’Connell (Sinners) as Blake, her toxic long-term squeeze, and Eddie Marsden (Sherlock Holmes) as her father, Mitch. 

No film in the 21st century did more for the musical biopic than Bohemian Rhapsody, a film that won Remi Malek (who wore a dazzling set of fake teeth and mimed the songs) an Oscar after taking in the best part of $1 billion at the box office on a $50 million budget—two facts that left more sceptical viewers wondering if this was indeed the real life or just fantasy.

We kid. Dexter Fletcher’s movie zipped through Freddy Mercury’s life at a pleasing clip and ended things with a stirring reenactment of Queen’s performance at Live Aid—a choice that left audience members leaving the cinema in a state of foot-tapping euphoria. If you like a sugar-rush biopic that doesn’t dwell on the sad or complicated parts, this one does the job with plenty of energy. 

Pablo Larraín’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as the Soprano Maria Callas, was the third film in the director’s trilogy of biopics on larger-than-life—and also somewhat doomed—women. That it was the least satisfying of those movies, after the good Spencer and the very good Jackie, shouldn’t take away from it being a far-above average musical biopic.

This was meant to be Jolie’s big comeback, but the movie didn’t connect with audiences in quite the way that awards prognosticators imagined at the beginning of 2024. Not to worry, as it’s still a touching portrait of a diva in her advancing years and boasts excellent supporting turns across the board—not least from the great Italian actors Alba Rohrwacher and Pierfrancesco Favino. (There is also plenty of typically sumptuous cinematography from the great Ed Lachman.) If you liked the previous films in Larraín’s trilogy, it’s more than worth seeking out. 

We move into the top five, where it’s basically banger after banger. Coming hot on the heels of Bohemian Rhapsody, it was a little surprising that Dexter Fletcher’s next movie, Rocketman, a biopic on Elton John with a sparkling central performance by Taron Egerton, didn’t reach quite the same heights as that previous film.

This was doubly unlucky for Egerton, who convincingly danced and sang his way through the role. Come for that performance, but keep an eye out for the wonderful supporting cast, which includes the great Stephen Graham (Adolescence) and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot), as well as a young Kit Conner (Heartstopper). 

The second most unorthodox biopic on this list (more on the other one later) is Kneecap—a movie that manages to tell the story of how the Irish language rap group (who play themselves) came to be while also giving audiences a hilarious crash course in Northern Irish history and a snapshot of the current movement to revitalise the Irish language. What’s extra unusual about this one is that many people watching it (at least outside the UK and Ireland) had never heard of them before. 

That an up-and-coming group with a decent amount of clout and credibility could go through something like this and come out the other side with their reputations enhanced says all you need to know about the Belfast natives’ inherent charisma. Imagine Trainspotting meets Derry Girls and you’ll have some idea of what to expect.

Timothée Chalamet might have tipped over the verge of internet oversaturation with the promotional blitz for Marty Supreme. Still, it was only a little over a year ago that the young star attempted something similar for his remarkable portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown—up to and including rolling his way into a Nardwuar interview, thrashing about on Instagram live in front of a giant screen, and appearing as both host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live.

Unlike the current tour, those appearances mostly felt in sync with James Mangold’s thoughtful account of the elusive singer’s rise through the New York folk scene—all the way up to going electric in 1965, a moment that Mangold can be forgiven for relocating from the UK to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. Pernickity Dylanites might baulk at seeing the film take those kinds of liberties, but no one was arguing about Chalamet’s remarkable mastery of the songs—he really did let us know how it feeeeels.

Big, loud, colourful, and occasionally hammy, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is a movie that he and only he could have made—which is why, after 159 minutes, it eventually beats you into trancelike submission. Upon release, Luhrmann’s dazzling ode took a lot of flak for Tom Hanks’ cartoonish performance as the Colonel and for the fact that Austin Butler—by all accounts a very nice fella—hadn’t quite managed to shake the King’s accent in subsequent interviews. By now, I’m confident in saying that the movie came out on top.

Some of the in-between bits can be jarring, but the recreations of the rock-n-roll legend’s most famous shows (especially the ‘68 comeback and his immortal final performance of ‘Unchained Melody’) are almost uncanny in their accuracy while still somehow feeling lived-in. If you liked Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet or The Great Gatsby, this is the one for you.

If, at the beginning of 2024, someone told me that one of the most moving films of the year was going to be a biopic of the singer Robbie Williams in which the former Take That member was played by a motion-capped monkey, I would have offered to get you to bed, grandpa.

And yet, all of that turned out to be true. Michael “The Greatest Showman” Gracey’s audacious Better Man not only pulled off those tricks, but it also did so with some of the most kinetic dance sequences this side of Spielberg’s West Side Story. Sadly, the movie tanked at the box office, but much like its subject, it will live to tell the tale.