Yesterday (The Movie)

The first biopics that I watched were 8 Mile (2002) and Notorious (2009). Notorious impacted me to the extent that in my last week of living in New York, I went on a self-guided Hip Hop tour of Brooklyn. I visited Biggie Small’s house that he grew up in, the supermarket on Fulton Street, Junior’s Cheesecake where Diddy and Smalls would hang out. It was incredible. And then there was the biopic on N.WA. in 2015. That was beautifully done. And then they did an amazing job on Queen and did the story justice. And then there was Rocketman, a biopic on Elton John - which I recommend if you haven’t seen it already. I’m a huge fan when it comes to biopics and movies that are based on true stories - especially when it’s about the music business and the history of music. I am absolutely fascinated in the makings behind it - all of the research and location matching that the directors put into consideration when filming the movie. Yesterday was no different. If you haven’t seen the trailer, the world pretty much had a global power outage and when the power rebooted somehow The Beatles never existed. No one’s heard of The Beatles except this struggling musician. He goes on to attempt to recreate all of their songs and, in the process, becomes this heralded songwriter. I thought it was really well done. It wasn’t a biopic but it paid homage to the impact of their music and how great The Beatles’ songs were. It was also pretty funny. I think these biopics are important in the way that it re-introduces the world to the music. To be completely honest, the only songs I knew from Elton John were Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me when Clay Aiken covered it in his return to the American Idol finale in 2006, Bennie and the Jets, Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (ft. Kiki Dee) and Your Song.. After leaving the theater, I couldn’t stop listening to the soundtrack. I think these biopics are important. I think there is never-ending content there. There are so many people that I would love to see have a biopic: George Michaels, Phil Collins, Run DMC, Snoop Dogg (this was teased in NWA), Diddy, etc. You could go down the list of Hip Hop greats or Rock greats. I, for one, am a huge fan and will continue to watch these biopics as long as they’re made.