Like millions of other people, I went to see Michael this week. I knew what I was getting into – most reviews have been brutal. It is a “whitewash”, “ghoulish”, a “127-minute trailer montage” of “cruise-ship entertainment”. And yet the film of Michael Jackson’s rise to global stardom has broken the record for the biggest opening in biopic history, and made $217m (£160m) worldwide on its first weekend of release, with over $900m projected by the end of its run.

So I found myself thinking: if we know these films are often sanitised pap, that the estates and lawyers have excised entire chapters of a musician’s life, why do we still go in droves? There’s the obvious explanation, of course. The biopics give audiences a way to experience a favourite artist at their peak and to dip into their much-loved musical catalogue.

But another part of it, I suspect, lies in our attitude to genius and our need to try to explain it.

We’ve always struggled to accept that extraordinary talent might simply exist, without a particular set of conditions giving rise to it. Since Plutarch wrote Parallel Lives nearly 2,000 years ago, the belief has persisted that if we study a great life closely enough, its secret might be uncovered. It’s what made the Romantics insist you couldn’t understand a poem without understanding the poet’s inner wounds. We cannot accept that talent simply arrives, unbidden,........

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