Welcome to peak Streaming Season, which also happens to double as Peak Spending Time With—and Inevitably Getting Frustrated With—Your Loved Ones season. Thanksgiving marks the official holiday kickoff, and if you’re lucky enough to get some time off and not have to spend it battling other shoppers for Black Friday deals that likely don’t even exist, odds are you’re going to soak in some breezy TV content. Streamers know this, so they program for it, leaning heavy on the nostalgia. Which can only mean one thing: music documentaries.
This weekend brings two big ones. First is another doc about the Fab Four on Apple TV+: Beatles ’64, about the year the blokes from Liverpool took over the States, one moptop at a time. The other is personal to us. On Friday, Ringer Films will release Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, the definitive story about the ’70s and ’80s soft-rock genre that’s taken on a second life in the 21st century. That one’s part of The Ringer’s HBO docuseries Music Box, and it’s available on Max just about the time you’re done with your annual viewing of A Christmas Story.
But what about before then? Or what about when you finish those? What about when you’re confronted with spending actual time with your family, who you surely love but also surely stress you out? Well, if talking politics with Uncle Bob isn’t your thing—and I really hope it isn’t—you need a plan. You need more docs.
So here we are to bring you a holiday survival plan, complete with the perfect music doc for every scenario. Uncle Bob trying to test your music knowledge again? We got you. Your siblings picking at old wounds? We got you, several times over. Your cousin trying to show you his rap songs? We got something real special for you. So please, watch Yacht Rock, but after you get done, sample this fine selection of emotional-support films we’ve got for you. Odds are, you’re gonna need them. —Justin Sayles
What to Watch When You Need a Reminder that Even the Closest Families Fight: The Beatles: Get Back
Ben Lindbergh: Disney knew what it was doing when it launched The Beatles: Get Back on Disney+ on Thanksgiving weekend in 2021. Peter Jackson’s epic excavation of footage from the 1969 sessions for the 1970 album and documentary Let It Be yielded almost eight hours of miraculously cleaned-up material. Not only does the Thanksgiving lull allow time to watch the three-part, movie-trilogy-length opus, but it also provides the perfect environment in which to take in Get Back’s depiction of the squabbling Beatles. As my colleague Katie Baker put it, Get Back shows the Beatles as a “band of brothers … with all the familial bickering and real love that such a kinship can provide.” Even if your family gatherings are less fraught than a Berzatto holiday dinner, you can probably commiserate with the Fab Four’s short fuses at this time of year. Plus, because the Beatles are popular among people of all ages, they can be a great unifier; your family might not spontaneously compose a classic song while waiting for a late-arriving relative, but watching Get Back as a group and debating who the best Beatle was might help you avoid more sensitive subjects. (If you’re tempted to talk politics, I’ll whisper words of wisdom: You should probably let it be.)
Get Back can be an inspiration from a planning perspective, too. If you’re having a big gathering, someone has to be the Paul McCartney equivalent who makes sure shit gets done and that the turkey traverses the long and winding road that leads to your plate. Shout-out to the 600-word itinerary/to-do list/menu my sister-in-law sent the whole family last week; Paul would be proud.
What to Watch When You Need to See Someone Else’s Sibling Dysfunction: Oasis: Supersonic
Nora Princiotti: May I recommend avoiding your own family full of eccentrics by watching two hours of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest sibling rivals nagging, bickering and generally insulting each other in the rudest possible terms while becoming, for a moment, the biggest band on Earth? This is not the kind of documentary that gets into all the unexplored nooks and crannies of its subject’s story—it’s narrowly focused on the three years from 1993 to 1996, from when Oasis first got signed by Creation Records to their ultimate peak, playing two nights at Knebworth that were the biggest shows England had ever seen. And even within that scope, it doesn’t sweat the side plots. Supersonic knows why you’re here: to feel what it was like on the crazy run from Definitely Maybe to (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, and to hear the Gallagher brothers hurling outlandish gripes like “I want the severed head of Phil Collins in my fridge” and “drummers are really smelly, useless, talentless losers.” That’s the good stuff! And my goodness, the songs.
What to Watch When the Boomers and Millennials Need to Find Common Ground: Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground
Julianna Ress: “We hated that ‘peace and love’ crap.” So goes a memorable bar by Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker in Todd Haynes’s excellent 2021 documentary on the band. A standout interview in the film—she bemoans hippies in one breath and recounts the touching story of when she took a rare vocal lead on the great “After Hours” in another—Tucker represents a true microcosm of the multidimensional band Haynes captures deftly on screen. Haynes, one of the most fascinating directors working today, proved his idiosyncratic approach to music biography with the experimental Bob Dylan-inspired I’m Not There, and it works even better in his first proper nonfiction feature. The Velvet Underground utilizes split-screens and layered audio to facilitate a dazzling atmosphere for a band who similarly used unconventional artistic flourishes in their own music, and the film’s touches convey just how radical that music was in its time. That’s not to say the documentary is all style over substance—the film is also genuinely informative, even for superfans who know the story of the Velvets by heart. Haynes compiled some incredible footage from the ’60s New York art scene and Andy Warhol’s Factory, plus he secured sit-downs with founding members John Cale and Tucker and some captivating archival tape from the late Lou Reed. And while the film is clearly reverential for the Velvet Underground discography, it does not shy away from depicting the toxic environments and ego clashes that surrounded and plagued the band. In a perfect match between creator and subject, Haynes’s documentary captures the essence of the band better than anyone else could. Let’s be thankful Joaquin Phoenix didn’t derail this one.
What to Watch When Your Cousin Needs a Reminder They’re Not the Main Character: 20 Feet from Stardom
Jodi Walker: Did you know that Luther Vandross got his start as a backup singer for David Bowie before breaking through as a solo artist, eventually garnering 33 Grammy nominations and eight wins?
But Vandross was the exception—not the rule. Most backup singers never cross over that 20-foot threshold between the trio of background mics and the spotlight. “It can be a pretty long walk,” Bruce Springsteen says at the beginning of 20 Feet from Stardom. But over the course of an hour and a half, the message of the documentary cuts through with perfect pitch from generations of iconic vocal talent such as Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, and Tata Vega: there’s beauty in that divide. This is a film about a love of music so deep that it defies ego or fame; about sacrificing individuality in order to achieve perfect harmony; about a calling so high that it can center art over self. And most importantly, it’s a music doc that features so much great music. From “Thriller” to “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” to “Monster Mash,” to the Growing Pains theme song, backup singers have shaped the music we’ve loved and listened to for generations.
Plus, there are appearances from The Boss for your dad, Bette Midler for your mom, Sheryl Crow for your aunts, a surprising amount of Sting for the whole family to enjoy, and a nice lesson in contributing to the greater good for your cousin.
What to Watch When Your Whole Family Could Use Therapy: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Justin Sayles: Being in a successful band is a lot like being in a family—the joy, the frustrations, the feelings that you’re wed to this thing no matter how bad it gets. In this 2004 documentary, Metallica takes this idea to the extreme by hiring an honest-to-god therapist to help them work through their relationship issues. And at the turn of the century, they had many of those to address: a war with Napster that turned the public against them, a bassist that had just quit, a tortured creative process that hadn’t yielded a decent album in a decade, and most of all, the constant push-and-pull of the Mom and Dad of the band, Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield.
Directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky—the duo behind the Paradise Lost West Memphis Three documentaries—Some Kind of Monster paints a portrait of one of the biggest musical acts of all time at a crossroads (and of one its members trying to sell his collection of paintings). You can’t help but develop extreme empathy for both Hetfield and guitarist Kirk Hammett, the latter of whom comes off like a kid that just wants his parents to stop fighting. (The head slap here rings loud; we’ve all been there, Kirk.) And while Lars has received his fair share of blame for his behavior—both in this doc or otherwise—the real villain of the film is the therapist who wants to weasel his way into basically being a part of the band. Much of it is relatable, some of it only applies if you’re the biggest heavy metal band ever, but all of it is gripping. It’s impossible to imagine this kind of warts-and-all film getting made about a massive band these days, in the post–Last Dance era of filmmaking, so the very fact it exists remains a miracle. Plus, you know the saying: All happy metal bands are all alike; every unhappy metal band is unhappy in its own way.
What to Watch When Your Sibling Is More Successful Than You, But Hey, You Matter Too: Mistaken for Strangers
Yasi Salek: The National is not unlike cilantro. Some people would lay down their life for the National, some people would rather die than hear two bars of their music, some people are basically indifferent, and everyone else falls somewhere in between. My point is that it doesn’t matter what real estate you occupy here—you can and likely will still enjoy this doc, directed by Tom Berninger, the hesher fail brother of the singer and chief lyricist of the band, Matt Berninger. Tom wisely (or accidentally) avoids making the expected film about the rise of some graphic designers who moved to Brooklyn from Ohio and made it to the top of Pitchfork mountain, leaving a slew of drained Negronis in their wake. He instead makes something far more interesting and moving: a beautiful meditation on purpose, self-worth, family, value systems, proximity to celebrity, and what it actually means to succeed. Plus, it’s funny as hell. (Early on, he asks his brother, in a serious tone, the following question: “On tour, it’s day in and day out—does that ever make you sleepy on stage?”) And the fact that Matt Berninger and the National (a unit made up of even more brothers) actually allowed this to be the end product means that the film’s existence stands ultimately as an act of love.
What to Watch When You Need to Find Something for Every Kind of Music Fan: Quincy
Justin Charity: Timely, obviously, since Quincy Jones died a few weeks ago, but I more so recommend Quincy, a documentary produced by Netflix and codirected by the late superproducer’s daughter, Rashida Jones, for its cozy, diaristic coverage of a genuinely fascinating musician who touched so many different eras and styles of American music. Surely you, your dad, and your grandfather, can all bond over Quincy Jones, whether you’re a family of R&B partisans, Sinatra stans, or classical clarinetists. The sort of documentary that everyone in a post-turkey stupor will inevitably start loudly talking over, if only to roast Quincy’s period fashion. I’ll allow it.
What to Watch When Someone—Canine? Toddler? Neither Will ’Fess Up—Shatters Your Prized SAD Light Therapy Lamp: Summer of Soul
Katie Baker: We’re all familiar with the concept of Christmas in July. (Attend enough summer camp or condo building lobby happy hours and you’ll be wearing a Santa hat and licking a Popsicle soon enough.) But personally, I prefer my imports of off-seasonal vibes to flow in the opposite direction, bringing light and heat to the calendar’s coldest days. One surefire way to do so? Simply flip on the Oscar-winning 2021 concert documentary Summer of Soul during the holidays.
Fronted by Questlove, the film showcases a legends-only outdoor music festival that took place in New York in 1969. Nope, not Woodstock, but the Harlem Cultural Festival, which featured six summer weekends’ worth of acts, from a teenaged Stevie Wonder to a stately B.B. King; from a girlish Gladys Knight to the godly Mahalia Jackson.
In my house alone, little babies have diaper-boogied in this movie’s presence. Hard-to-please boomers have reminisced about the musical Hair. And I have embarked on a three-part Mavis Staples journey that begins in Harlem with Summer of Soul, lingers at the Warfield in 1976 c/o The Last Waltz, and came full circle with her grande-dame appearance at the Soulshine benefit concert last weekend. Merry and bright, Summer of Soul has something for everyone, lighting up the spirit like a palm tree in a Corona ad and always, always warming the heart.
What to Watch for a Reminder That Being With Your Loved Ones Is a Beautiful Thing, Even If Your Loved Ones Are Morons: Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Brian Phillips: Fuuuuuck! Fuck yeah! Fuckin’ fuck, man! Judas fuckin’ Priest! From a functional standpoint, these sentences constitute all the dialogue of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, a 17-minute movie that consists of nothing but footage from the car park outside a Judas Priest concert in suburban Maryland in the gloriously stupid late spring of 1986. There’s no dramatic arc. Nothing happens. Well, one dude rants so hard about how much he fuckin’ hates fuckin’ punk rock, man, that he hits himself in the face with the microphone and almost falls over, which to be frank is a more compelling plot than you find in most Star Wars sequels. But other than that it’s just a giddy parade of dirty Trans-Ams, feathery-haired boys who weigh 122 pounds standing around drinking Jack Daniel’s in skinny jeans and no shirts, and a lot—like, a lot—of whooping about “the Priest.” Also Dokken. Dokken was the opening act. Dokken fuckin’ rocks, man. Not sure if you’ve noticed.
If it’s not already clear, I sincerely believe that Heavy Metal Parking Lot is the greatest rock documentary ever made, and I say that even though it contains no history, no context, no interpretation, no insight, and almost no music. It conveys no facts, but it makes you feel at a cellular level what it was like to be young, wasted, mildly hopeless, and utterly on top of the world on this one specific May night, and to come together with people who truly get you (i.e., people who also use “jump his bones” as a euphemism for sex). This holiday season, let us hope all our families, biological or chosen, can rock this fuckin’ hard for us.
What to Watch When You Need to Explain Your Musical Taste and Personal Style to Your Uninterested Nieces: Hype!
Alan Siegel: As much as I liked Singles, Montage of Heck, and Pearl Jam Twenty, there’s no better cinematic portrayal of Seattle music in the late ’80s and early ’90s than director Doug Pray’s doc. There’s plenty of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden—the footage of the first performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is an amazing time capsule—but their lesser-known peers are the stars of the film. You know, bands like Screaming Trees, the Supersuckers, and Tad. Even after their friends have made it big, they still seem genuinely shocked that major record labels descended upon their town. To them, it understandably felt ridiculous. “Right now, Seattle is quarter until six at Christmas Eve at a shopping mall when the mall closes at 6 o’clock,” Megan Jasper, who went on to become the CEO of Sub Pop, says at one point. “When it’s too crazy and it’s loaded with submoronic idiots prancing around, buying everything they can get their hands on.” That metaphor is a good example of what the movie captures and most mainstream accounts of the scene don’t: its sense of humor.
What to Watch When Your Mom Suggests Gathering in the Living Room to Watch the New Amy Winehouse Movie: Amy
Aric Jenkins: No disrespect to Marisa Abela, who is fine enough in the titular role (and excellent in other projects like Industry), but the perfect Amy Winehouse movie was released nearly a decade ago. Asif Kapadia’s Amy is a riveting, gut-wrenching narrative constructed almost exclusively from archival footage dating back to the singer’s adolescence. Rather than lean on the hackneyed tropes of Hollywood music biopics, Amy lets Amy herself tell the story of her rapid ascent and downfall. It may sound like a strange watch for a jovial holiday, but trust me, your mom is wrong about this one. Stick with Amy and watch a master class in documentary filmmaking, which will leave you feeling thankful in more ways than one. As a bonus, you’ll be treated to a treasure trove of previously unreleased demo tracks, as well as a soundtrack featuring some of Winehouse’s most iconic tunes.
What to Watch When You’re Grieving the End of the Eras Tour: Miss Americana
Lindsay Jones: I can hardly remember a time before Taylor Swift launched the Eras Tour. What did I do with my weekend (and some weekday) evenings before I pulled up grainy livestreams of Swift’s shows on TikTok or YouTube? What did my group texts look like before they were dominated by discussions of surprise songs and Swift’s fashion choices? What was my job of covering the NFL like before Swift became the most famous WAG? (I am realizing how crazy this all sounds, and that maybe I have revealed too much about myself.) Anyway! Swift has just one stop left of the tour, and just three more shows, Dec. 6-8 in Vancouver. I miss it already. Sure, I could fire up the Eras Tour movie on Disney+ if I need a fix over the holidays, or I could just wait for Swift to drop the documentary about the Eras Tour—cameras have been spotted following her for months. If you really want to fill that Taylor void in your life while you’re clowning for an announcement of Reputation (Taylor’s Version), may I suggest Miss Americana, the 2020 documentary that took us inside the process of creating her seventh album, Lover, and behind the scenes of the Reputation Tour. It’s especially interesting to rewatch the doc knowing what we know now about her relationship with Joe Alwyn, which was in its honeymoon phase during filming, about her political beliefs and growing voice in that arena as she took on Donald Trump for the first time, and about her struggles with fame and body image. It’s essential viewing if you want to understand 2024 Taylor Swift.
What to Watch When Your Cousin Tries to Play You His New Mixtape: Rap World
Charles Holmes: 2009 was a culturally grim year. The highest-grossing movie at the domestic box office was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Susan Boyle’s I Dreamed a Dream sold 8.3 million copies worldwide. The last year of the first decade of the new millennium might’ve been a dark time for art, but has proved to be a fertile playground for the year’s best mockumentary.
Rap World, directed by Conner O’Malley and Danny Scharar, is 56 poignant minutes of white nonsense that often borders on transcendence. The film follows three friends from Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania—played by O’Malley, Jack Bensinger, and Eric Rahill—on a quest to finish a rap album in one night. Shot on a camcorder and edited like a demented CKY video, the mockumentary is a piercingly accurate portrayal of rap thirst at a time when “Lose Yourself” still meant something. There’s a charm to witnessing the same blind, suburban ambition that births a new Jack Harlow every other year rendered this deftly onscreen. In the heart of Tobyhanna, O’Malley and Co. found the real America. It’s a place of empty basements, where you either die a Pennsylvania County MC or live long enough to become a swing-state Migos.
What to Watch When You Get Cornered by Your Younger Cousins to Talk About Playlists: Keepintime
Keith Fujimoto: It happens every Thanksgiving. While I’m waiting to fill plate no. 2 with more mac ’n’ cheese and chicken karaage, one of my 20-something cousins will pester me about my Spotify listening for the year. So this time, to avoid being Mr. Old Head Yelling at a Cloud for the umpteenth time, I plan on digging through some shoe boxes for an HDMI cord and throwing my Keepintime DVD on to avoid any heated debates about lo-fi beats and splatter vinyl.
For 45 minutes I can enjoy my highball in silence as they stare in awe at Babu, J Rocc, DJ Shortkut, DJ Numark, and Cut Chemist cutting up actual records on turntables (not CDJs or a USB controller) while some of L.A.’s finest drummers (Roy Porter, Earl Palmer, Paul Humphrey, James Gadson) lay down some of the funkiest beats.
In the 2004 Mochilla doc directed by Brian Cross, an idea—to have some of L.A.’s most notable session drummers take some photos and talk about their sampled recordings—morphs into a complex bridge-building exercise about musical evolution across generations.
It’s an exploration of rhythm, collaboration, and sound that also helps drown out any awkward background conversations my aunty will eventually be having with my mom or pops. Nothing cuts through senseless chatter like chirp scratches and booming bass drum hits.
There’s something endlessly fascinating to watch what is essentially an improvised jam session unfold between the DJs, Numark and his MPC, Derf Reklaw flexing his multi-instrumentalist muscles, and the drummers. Oh yeah, Madlib was there too. None of the greatest defensive schemers in NFL history could respond and react in real time like this. Apologies in advance if the grooves you hear force one of your titos to break out his terrible Raygun impersonation and bust his ass.
If there’s one thing I can teach the youths this Thanksgiving, it’s that, “those who dig won’t fill their wigs with all that blah blah blah.”
What to Watch When Your Uncle Thinks He Knows About Rock History: A Band Called Death
khal: You know the scenario: You’re on your second plate of Thanksgiving goodness while your know-it-all uncle is on his third old fashioned, and an argument about the origins of, say, punk rock is brought up. Maybe they rightfully give credit to the Stooges and the days before CBGB became the place for the future of punk rock, but you know something is missing from their argument. That’s when you dig through your DVD spindles and grab the 2012 documentary A Band Called Death, which documented the Detroit-based African American trio who are credited as not only being the first Black punk rock band, but punk rock’s first band. A Band Called Death properly tells the story of brothers Bobby, David, and Dannis Hackney who decided to form a band after watching the Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. By 1973, the group—then known as the Rock Fire Funk Express—was now christened Death as a way to spin the tragedy of their father’s passing into a positive for their group. (Death disbanded in 1977, releasing only two singles while working on a demo they hoped would be their first album, hence why your know-it-all, punk-rock-loving uncle may not have heard of Death.) The beauty of the documentary is that it follows what happened after Death, as well as the punk rock world finally giving Death its due in the late 2000s. This means that you will surely get some kind of Death-related gift; maybe a bunch of their releases from the 2010s. Just smile and make sure you hide your vinyl copy of ...For the Whole World to See before unc can see it!
What to Watch When You Need to Disassociate Completely: “Gentle and Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee”
Andrew Gruttadaro: So you wanna watch a rock documentary but you have one particular problem: Documentaries are too real, man. Too based in reality, too much of a reminder of the society and circumstances that you’re trying to escape by popping a movie on in the first place. Well, boy, do I have good news for you: In 2015, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader made a pitch-perfect rock-doc parody as part of their Documentary Now! series. More than a little inspired by History of the Eagles, “Gentle and Soft: The Story of the Blue Jean Committee” tells the story of two Chicago-born boys, Gene and Clark, who left behind the honorable meat tradition of their fathers, hit it big with a California record, and then split up, not to speak again for three decades. It’s an undeniably funny mock-doc—the sentence “So we dropped out of sausage school to play music” is one you simply have to witness—but it’s also incredibly lived-in, as Armisen plays the creative force of the Blue Jean Committee, who left Hollywood and returned to his sausage-making roots, and Hader plays the one who stayed in Los Angeles and turned his band into a money-making machine. The beats and idiosyncrasies are perfectly dialed—Documentary Now!’s greatest strength as a show was always that the parodies came from a place of true love—and the wistfulness, regret, and sadness that both Armisen and Hader’s characters harbor is palpable and touching. It’s 42 minutes of delight.
Of course, there’s another reason I chose “Gentle and Soft” for this exercise: Because if the Blue Jean Committee actually existed, they would’ve been featured heavily in Yacht Rock. The band’s biggest song, “Catalina Breeze,” is a spot-on impression of Steely Dan, and there’s also plenty of character crossover between the Now! episodes and Yacht Rock, from Kenny Loggins to Michael McDonald (also, enjoy the talking head appearance in “Gentle and Soft” from The Ringer-adjacent Chuck Klosterman). So maybe what you should do is put on “Gentle and Soft” as a little warm-up to Yacht Rock. Or reverse that order and use it as a come-down. It doesn’t matter—as Clark says multiple times in the doc, “I don’t give a shit.” I just think you should see both.
