From ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ to ‘Blinded by the Light:’ The Rise of Jukebox Movies

Is it just me, or are a lot of movies luring us to the theater with prime karaoke playlists recently?

You’ve got Bohemian Rhapsody, the wildly successful 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic starring Rami Malek, which featured every single one of Queen’s hits and 11 unreleased recordings from the 70s British rock band. You’ve got Rocketman, which took a slightly different approach for 22 Elton John tunes by re-recording them, most sung by star Taron Egerton. Then there was the Richard Curtis romantic comedy Yesterday, which was not a biopic, but still showcased 20 Beatles songs, sung haphazardly by Himesh Patel’s character as the only man in the world who remembers the Fab Four. And currently in theaters is Blinded by the Light, a slightly less high-concept comedy from director Gurinder Chadha about a British-Pakistani teen obsessed with Bruce Springsteen, featuring no less than 19 original recordings—including a few that were previously unreleased—from The Boss himself.

Of those four film soundtracks, recording engineer Sam Okell has worked on three of them: Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, and Yesterday. “They are all quite similar, in that they’re trying to bring to the cinema songs that people know and love,” Okell said in a phone interview with Decider. “But they’re also quite different films in terms of how they are using music.”

Okell, 39, has been working on movie soundtracks at Abbey Road Studios for 18 years. (He also works on albums, including remixing anniversary projects for The Beatles and Paul McCartney, for which he’s won two Grammy Awards. His next is an Abbey Road remix for the album’s 50th in September.) His role on the three films was both in the studio, working with musicians as they record, and in post-production, working with the editors, mixing the music, and making it sound good. He feels these music-driven films, which make up nearly half of his IMDB credits in the last two years are “definitely a trend,” though, “it’s not a new genre, but it’s certainly popular right now.”

He’s right, of course. Music biopics like Ray, Walk The Line, Amadeus, and La Bamba were all popular and critically-acclaimed, so much so that they even inspired the 2007 parody, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. But what’s happening right now feels a little different. Bohemian Rhapsody took a traditional biopic approach, depicting Mercury’s rise to fame while working in Queen songs via studio or at gig scenes; but also, crucially, closed the film with a 15-minutes sequence at the Live Aid concert. With no other dialogue or story beyond the hit songs, it was essentially just an expertly-filmed recreation of a great Queen concert. Rocketman was a far less straight-forward approach to the biopic, and instead leaned into fantasy musical aspects. Neither Yesterday and Blinded by the Light are biopics, but they still feel like part of the trend: Films revolving around a feel-good, feel-familiar soundtrack.

What are these films, collectively, then?  I propose a new term: Jukebox movie. A jukebox movie is a movie that is not quite a musical but revolves around popular music. A jukebox movie encompasses music biopics, but the term is especially applicable to the ones like Straight Outta Compton, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Rocketman, all of which worked directly with the still-living musicians to showcase their music. But it’s not quite the same as the films that star the musicians, like 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night, or the always-popular music documentaries and concert films.

Plots that revolve around crowd-pleasing songs are already a time-honored storytelling tradition on Broadway, of course. Every year there’s a new slew of “jukebox musicals,” or musicals that take the songs of a popular artist and create a (usually tenuously connected) plot around them. Walk through the theatre district today and you’ll see The Cher Show featuring Cher songs, Head Over Heels featuring The Go-Go’s songs, Ain’t Too Proud featuring The Temptations’ songs, Escape to Margaritaville featuring Jimmy Buffet songs, and so much more. Some, like the Abba-based musical Mamma Mia! and the classic-rock tribute Rock of Ages even make the jump to feature films. It’s not hard to see why they’re popular: Who doesn’t want to forget the world outside and enjoy the comforting familiarity of Carole King songs for a few hours? Nor is it surprising that so many jukebox musicals keep getting made: It’s much easier for a producer to say yes to an artist who’s already sold a million records than it is to say yes to an unknown composer.

Jukebox movies are not quite jukebox musicals, though they flirt with the genre. They’re grounded in reality in the way true musicals are not, and perhaps this appeals to the anti-musical crowd, who I’m told—though I can’t possibly relate—find it off-putting when characters burst into song and everyone goes along with it. All of the Beatles hits in Yesterday are performed in-universe by star Himesh Patel, who rises to fame by passing off the McCartney/Lennon tunes as his own. There’s one scene in Blinded by the Light that finds stars Viveik Kalra, Hayley Atwell, and Aaron Phagura running through the streets singing “Born to Run”—choreography is fudged in when the trio stumbles into a group of street performers—but the majority of the film feels more similar to a music video than a musical, with a Springsteen soundtrack always running through the hero’s head. Rocketman is the most musical-like: Some of the Elton John songs are relayed via a concert scene, but other times the characters vent about their feelings via spontaneous, choreographed numbers.

Okell understands the allure. “People like hearing great songs,” he said. But he’s curious to see, as more of these movies come out, whether “the public have any interest in whether the actor is singing, or is just miming the original version. Rami Malek, who played Freddie, didn’t sing a note in that film, but people still believed him.”

That factor impacts Okell job greatly, who spent hours in the editing room on Bohemian Rhapsody perfecting Malek’s lip-sync. “We do lots of little tricks, like using [Malek’s] breaths, his Ts and his S’s—all those things that make an individual performance—and cutting them into phrases of Freddie Mercury singing. That makes the miming a lot more believable.”

As with any trend, it’s hard to say how long the jukebox movie will last. Neither Rocketman nor Yesterday were the monster successes that Bohemian Rhapsody was. (Okell notes that following the success of Bohemian Rhapsody—which became the highest-grossing music biopic of all time and skyrocketed Queen album sales—the Rocketman music arranger was asked to take John’s piano ballads and “make them a bit bigger and more epic.”) But both films were hits: Rocketman exceeded its R-rated expectations by taking home $190 million at the box office, and Yesterday is the highest-grossing romantic comedy of the summer thus far. Blinded by the Light, on the other hand, has so far only made $8.6 million, no doubt disappointing Warner Bros. who paid $15 million to acquire it following its glowing Sundance reviews.

That said, there are plenty of music-driven films to look forward to including a Boy George biopic; an Aretha Franklin biopic starring Jennifer Hudson; a Judy Garland biopic starring Renée Zellweger; a Céline Dion part-biopic, part-musical called The Power of Love; and a non-biopic film inspired by Prince songs. Even Bridesmaids director Paul Feig’s next film, a romantic comedy starring Emilia Clarke called Last Christmas, heavily features the music of George Michael, including previously unreleased tracks.

Okell thinks that’s only the beginning. “There’s going to be plenty more of these, in my opinion,” he said. “There’s a way to go before people get tired.”

Where to stream Bohemian Rhapsody

Where to stream Rocketman

Where to stream Yesterday