The 10 Best Music Biopics Ever Made

While many eyes are on the brawl between Batman and Superman soon to hit theaters, this weekend will see another cinematic clash on movie screens: Hank Williams v Chet Baker: Dawn Of Justice. In a quirk of the release calendar, the two singers —one from the country world, the other from jazz— are both the subjects of movie biopics released this Friday, with Tom Hiddleston playing Williams in “I Saw The Light,” and Ethan Hawke as Baker in “Born To Be Blue.”

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Yet it’s hard to get too enthusiastic, since few genres are as lashed to formula as the biopic, and the music biopic in particular. The clichés have been around for years, but it was the one-two punch of “Ray” and “Walk The Line” a decade ago that felt like the last straw. Both films feature terrific Oscar-winning performances, but are weighed down by basically being the same movie as each other, as well as a dozen or so others.

Neither “Born To Be...