Are Biopics Musicals?

 We have seen countless movies based on famous people's lives but one trend is musicians, whether it is Whitney Houston, Bob Marley, Elton John and so many more. But it is not just the big screen the stage has seen shows cataloging the life of musicians and featuring songs from their career, such as Cher, Carole King, and Gloria Estefan which I have seen. So today I wanted to ask, do biopics count as musical movies?

Biopics have been on a range of famous people and historical figures but I wanted to focus specifically on those concerning musicians, as those are where songs and music are shown the most. There are plenty of musicals on stage, at least one per year if not more that either tells the story of a musician's life while showcasing their music, such as Tina Tuner, but those are different than musicals where they use popular music to advance a story. Though both are classified as jukebox musicals, Mama Mia or Moulin Rouge use popular music and fit it into places that push the plot along in a fictional story that uses the music to convey its emotions, almost like fitting pieces into a puzzle. 

The movies mainly show musician' struggles and how they overcame the odds to be where they are now while showing how their popular songs came to be, and are performed, much like how musicals of that same vein do. In terms of plot either one could be on stage or as a movie and have a vast amount of similarities, but there is one major difference.

Most of these biopic movies do not stop the movie to show the song, they will show a small snippet of the song and only have one or two songs performed in their entirety. Whereas on stage the songs are numerous and the show stops to shine a light on them and let either a shorter or the whole song be performed depending on the moment in the show. Many Broadway shows try to put in as many songs as possible from the musician's career shorter versions of the songs are performed to give a fun sample of the song you know and check it off the list. When I saw "On Your Feet" which is the Gloria Estefan musical, many of the songs were cut down to put in as many as possible, same as when I reviewed the album for the Carole King musical, "On Your Feet" even having a medley at the end to add even more songs. 

When I watch these movies based on famous musicians it seems the focus is more on them as a person outside their music career and how the music got made. It seems to focus more on the events surrounding the song and then gives you a small version of it. Most of them end with concerts which then are the big emotional focal points and showcase multiple songs in a rapid fire way. Emulating the excitement of seeing a concert live to help balance with all the emotional storytelling shown in the movie and show the song in its entirety as a reward for watching where the lead is in their life now and for going through the struggles presented in the film.  

On stage, the balance comes from trying to not be just a concert, but rather present a story in the musical format. The stage version has to find the story and song balance, while still having enough times where the music can shine and so it can be labeled as a musical. The live stage musical has a different set of standards than a movie, it is just interesting to see the similarities and how the two have as much in common as they do different. I hope to keep exploring this idea and topic, diving deeper, and keep searching around until I have a definitive answer or opinion. Until then I say they are different until proven otherwise. I say this because the music is often not used as much in a movie as it is on stage, and is often shown as a reward rather than move the plot along.