Music biopics have always struck me as having something off about them. I’ve never been one to connect my experience of music to the life stories of its creators, as fascinating as they often are. But it’s the genre itself. It has too much to do to do much of anything interesting.

The biopics have two main roles: first, to kick off a reappraisal of an artist’s work (a nicer way of saying “move some greatest hits compilations in the form of soundtracks”), and second, to offer a launch pad for young acting talent, who get a juicy role as a beloved artist. I’ve got no problem with either of these — I liked hearing more Ray Charles after Ray came out, and seeing more Jamie Foxx. What I really have a problem with are the films themselves.

Hollywood almost always burdens biopics with a pat genre conventions that polish off the edges of the lives of artists, pushing eccentric and troubled lives into a standardized narrative: early sparkles of talent, improbable rise, excess and betrayal, decline, and, in some form or fashion, redemption (even if only through death and a lasting legacy). Whether it’s Johnny Cash or Notorious B.I.G., the song remains more or less the same.