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Ever think you knew everything about your favorite musicians? Think again. The landscape of music documentaries has exploded recently, giving us access to stories we never heard, struggles we never witnessed, and creative processes we never imagined. These films aren’t just promotional fluff pieces or concert reels slapped together for streaming platforms.
They’re intimate, raw, and sometimes uncomfortable glimpses into the real people behind the music we’ve been streaming for years. From the recording booth drama to the personal battles fought offstage, these ten new documentaries are reshaping how we understand the artists we thought we knew. Let’s dive in.
Stax: Soulsville USA
This four-part series on HBO focuses on Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, which became one of the most influential studios of soul music and launched the careers of stars such as Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes. What makes this documentary fascinating is how it doesn’t shy away from the complexities behind the music. The film properly hails Stax’s role in helping bring people of different races together, but also examines some of the tensions in severely segregated Memphis that sometimes made it hard for the label to operate, and sometimes fueled tension within the company. Here’s the thing about music history. We often remember the hits and forget the battles fought to get them heard. This series reminds us that creating art in a divided society required more than just talent. It demanded courage, compromise, and occasionally confrontation. You’ll never listen to those classic soul tracks the same way again.
The Beach Boys
This documentary showcases brand-new interviews from members of the band like Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks, and Bruce Johnston, along with archival footage of Carl Wilson and Dennis Wilson, and guest appearances from Janelle Monae, Lindsey Buckingham, Ryan Tedder, and Don Was. The documentary takes direction towards the creative aspect and the process behind their legendary album ‘Pet Sounds’, which highlighted the friendly rivalry of the band with The Beatles and Brian Wilson’s vision and style of music. The surviving band members open up about dynamics that shaped their decades together. Watching Wilson discuss his creative process is like getting a masterclass in musical innovation. You realize the California sunshine sound we all know came from a place of intense pressure, competition, and personal demons. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking at once.
The Greatest Night in Pop
This fascinating look at the making of “We Are the World” captures the excitement and chaos of the historic USA for Africa supergroup collaboration that united the era’s biggest musical stars for charity. Director Bao Nguyen’s masterpiece shows the musicians’ personalities in close quarters, working all night, and the footage of superstars standing nervously in the same room bringing their best performance to the table is nicely juxtaposed against the “new” footage Nguyen created for the film. Let’s be real, watching Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Cyndi Lauper crammed into one recording booth sounds chaotic. It was. Yet somehow these massive egos checked themselves at the door for a greater cause. The documentary reveals just how fragile that whole endeavor was, teetering between historic collaboration and potential disaster with every take.
I Am: Celine Dion
The documentary looks back on Celine Dion’s long and successful career and opens up about her recent battle with stiff person syndrome, showing her getting emotional about having to take a step back from performing due to her health struggles. This one hits differently than your typical career retrospective. It’s hard to say for sure, but watching someone reckon with losing the very thing that defines them feels almost too intimate. Dion’s vulnerability throughout this film is striking. She doesn’t hide behind the glittering gowns and soaring ballads. Instead, we see someone grappling with a cruel twist of fate that threatens to silence one of the most powerful voices in music history.
Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple
The documentary about musician, actor and activist Stevie Van Zandt first premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the film focuses on his job playing with Bruce Springsteen as well as his time with Artists United Against Apartheid. Van Zandt is one of those figures who’s always been there but never fully in the spotlight. This documentary finally gives him his due. You discover a man who shaped rock and roll from the shadows, influenced political activism through music, and somehow found time to become a television actor. His story reveals how some of the most important contributions to music come from people whose names don’t headline festivals. It’s a reminder that behind every legend stands someone equally fascinating.
One to One: John & Yoko
Director Kevin Macdonald gives an intimate look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s life in early 1970s New York, focusing on the One to One Concerts, Lennon’s only full-length shows after the Beatles. The film shows their unwavering dedication to promoting peace and non-violence during a turbulent era of unrest, corruption and unnecessary war. The documentary focuses primarily on Lennon’s life from 1971 to 1973, when he and Yoko Ono moved to New York City, a time fraught with radical politics and one of his strangest records, Some Time in New York City. Honestly, this period of Lennon’s life gets overlooked constantly. We focus on the Beatles years or his tragic death, but this in-between phase reveals an artist trying to balance activism, artistry, and personal identity. The documentary doesn’t sanitize their story or turn it into hagiography. It shows two complicated people navigating fame, politics, and love.
Eno
Each screening will have different scenes and music, so you’ll never see the same thing twice, and this new approach matches Brian Eno’s own artistic ideas, creating a unique documentary experience that reflects the subject’s creative principles. The team utilized a couture software program and generative tech that continues to choose footage, then edits and screens the Eno film differently each time, culled from 30 hours of interviews and 500 hours of archival footage. I know it sounds crazy, but this might be the most innovative music documentary ever made. The form matches the artist perfectly. Eno has spent his career exploring randomness, generative systems, and the beauty of unpredictability. This documentary embodies those principles. Your version of the film is literally different from mine. That’s not a gimmick. That’s art.
Billy Joel: And So It Goes
This two-part documentary is billed as “an expansive portrait of the life and music of Billy Joel” that will explore “the love, loss and personal struggles that fuel his songwriting,” co-directed by Jessica Levin, who previously made 2018’s excellent Jane Fonda in Five Acts. Billy Joel is one of those artists everyone thinks they know. He’s the Piano Man. He wrote the catchy songs. Yet this documentary reveals layers of complexity we’ve missed. The personal struggles, the battles with depression, the complicated relationships that fueled his most iconic songs. You realize the upbeat anthems we sing along to came from a place of genuine pain and hard-won wisdom. The documentary doesn’t try to explain away his flaws or contradictions. It embraces them.
Janis Ian: Breaking Silence
This multi-decade portrait chronicles Janis Ian’s journey as a pioneering singer-songwriter, weaving together interviews, rare archives, animation, and live footage to tell her story from her 1960s breakthrough to her continued influence as an artist and activist. The documentary tells the story of Janis Ian’s remarkable life and career, from her seminal folk-pop songs Society’s Child and At Seventeen to her coming out in the early 1990s, and also covers her heartbreaking 2022 tour cancellation due to vocal scarring. Ian’s story is one of those underappreciated narratives in music history. She hit massive success young, navigated industry sexism, broke barriers by coming out decades ago, and kept creating regardless of commercial trends. The documentary captures not just her musical evolution but her resilience. It’s both inspiring and sobering.
Lilith Fair
Dan Levy and Elevation Pictures dive deep into the 1990s all-women music festival, Lilith Fair, which was started by Sarah McLachlan to fight against sexism in the music industry and became a platform for female artists when they were often sidelined at major music events. With heartfelt interviews with McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, and Bonnie Raitt, the documentary shows the challenges and successes behind the scenes, all of it coming together in a highlight on the festival’s role in raising over $10 million for women’s charities. Looking back now, it’s wild how revolutionary this festival was. Female artists literally couldn’t get booked at major festivals because promoters claimed audiences wouldn’t show up for multiple women acts. Lilith Fair proved them spectacularly wrong. This documentary captures that moment of defiance and celebration, reminding us how recently women in music had to fight for basic respect and opportunities.
These documentaries do something essential. They strip away the mythology we’ve built around our favorite artists and replace it with something more valuable: truth. The real stories are messier, more complicated, and ultimately more inspiring than the legends. Did you expect that? These aren’t just films about music. They’re films about creativity, survival, ambition, failure, and the human need to make something beautiful even when everything feels impossible. What will you watch first?
Christian Wiedeck, all the way from Germany, loves music festivals, especially in the USA. His articles bring the excitement of these events to readers worldwide.
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