The reviews are in for the trailer for the imminent Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black. Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, it stars Marisa Abela as Winehouse, who died in 2011. Vitriol has been heaped on Abela’s vocals in a clip depicting Winehouse singing Stronger Than Me from her debut album, Frank. People (who’ve yet to see the film) are mad that Abela (who broke through in the television city finance drama, Industry) can’t sing as well, croon as sinuously, as Winehouse.
So, Abela isn’t Amy’s exact vocal-doppelganger – the only reasonable reaction can be, so what? If the Winehouse magic were that easy to reproduce, you’d wonder what made her so special. That aside, it’s weird to see people bashing a film based on singing in a trailer. What does that say about the music biopic genre? What does it say about us?
I’ll pause here to note the unlovely whiff of sexism to the attacks on Abela, while others get off scot-free. I had to abandon the much-lauded 2022 Elvis Presley biopic, Elvis (I couldn’t shake the feeling that Austin Butler had absconded from one of those Presley-themed, Las Vegas quickie-wedding chapels). Likewise, photos from the forthcoming Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, have emerged showing Timothée Chalamet resembling a confused child who’d fallen headfirst into a 1960s dressing-up box. Where’s the heat for them? But I digress. This isn’t about individual performances, it’s a far bigger problem than that.
The music biopic is a vast, ever-expanding genre (including Taylor-Johnson’s 2009 Beatles drama, Nowhere Boy), and there’s not enough space to go into them all here. Suffice to say some have been good: Coal Miner’s Daughter (Loretta Lynn); Control (Ian Curtis); Ray (Ray Charles) and more. Some have been deliciously bad. One recalls The Doors, in which Oliver Stone cast Meg Ryan as a rock chick. And Bohemian Rhapsody, featuring an industrially sanitised, barely gay Freddie Mercury.
Others (such as the David Bowie homage, Stardust, and the disappointing cartoon-punk-esque Sid and Nancy) clearly weren’t allowed (or couldn’t afford) to use the songs of the artists, even on the soundtrack. What all decent biopics have in common, even when good singing is involved (Walk the Line, about Johnny Cash and June Carter), is that deep-dive characterisation and story comes before the tunes. Always.
Here’s the thing: music biopics aren’t impersonations. They’re not Stars in Their Eyes. They aren’t big-screen karaoke. They’re not a cinematic vending machine for songs. Indeed, the fact that, increasingly, the film industry (and the audience) expects them to be all of these things goes some way to explaining how tiresome, hackneyed, cheesy, tacky and borderline unwatchable the genre has become.
Too often, I’ve plonked myself in front of a biopic that ends up feeling akin to one of the oft-maligned (but at least honest) West End “jukebox musicals”, just with a bit more Wikipedia-level backstory crowbarred in. Or one of those creepy-sounding hologram shows, at which people are supposed to tragically boogie to images of artists produced by lasers/electronic gubbins (incidentally, plans for an Amy Winehouse hologram show were shelved after a fan backlash).
With too many biopics, the objective seems purely to showcase the back catalogue, produce a nostalgic, feelgood singalong, and shift a few units in the lucrative heritage market. Kerching! Which is how we arrive here, with a film being trashed because Abela is not deemed to sound sufficiently like Winehouse during a trailer lasting 98 seconds. Seriously?
Admittedly, earnest musical mimicry isn’t my jam (baby!). While some may have cried “cop out!”, I wouldn’t have cared (that much) if Abela had been dubbed (as was planned). Or if the songs had stayed firmly on the soundtrack. With Back to Black, it’s also hard to tell whether the reaction is partly due to people pushing back against the Amy industry.
Still, it’s odd how only music biopics seem so exactingly appraised. Films about painters aren’t decried because canvases aren’t correctly daubed. Likewise, sports (in Nyad, about marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, I don’t recall Annette Bening being judged on her front crawl). Only with musicians is it a “thing” – when it’s a fallacy that singers are easy to imitate. Distinctive vocals such as those belonging to Winehouse don’t happen minute by minute, or even moment by moment. They happen molecule by molecule. It’s nigh-on impossible to authentically mimic them.
Some might say: if you can’t do it, don’t take the job. However, it’s not the job, or it shouldn’t be. A biopic’s true mission is to give you the essence of the human being, the story beyond the talent. Unlike a fictional group (such as Stillwater in Almost Famous), where arguably it helps to see them in action, the subject’s legacy is self-evidently secure; their gifts taken as read.
Thus, the music biopic is far more of an acting job than a singing job. It does not require sending people out in vocal-drag to perform the hits for what’s fast becoming a cheese-stuffed, cash-in zombie film genre. I’ll judge Back to Black on how well it delivers “Amy Winehouse”, not on how fast it plugs in the karaoke box.
• Barbara Ellen is a columnist for the Observer
