Once upon a time …
We all attach meaning and significance to music we listen to and love. But we also crave the stories behind how songs, albums, tragedies, mysteries, and magic moments in music history came to be - and it is a crucial part of developing and engaging your audience.
Music documentaries can dramatise the mythos of the music we love and the musicians that made it, reinforcing or uncovering the folklore around artists and figures working in music through the ages. Certain documentaries offer new perspectives away from how the media paints individuals and the industry, which makes us fall in love with all kinds of music all over again.
The medium emphasises the sheer magnitude and meaning of music, and, perhaps most importantly, can drastically boost streaming/sales and brand visibility as a result.
Some documentaries attempt to crystallise a noteworthy cultural moment, bringing to life what would otherwise only be shared by word of mouth or the memories of those who were there. Stories of the generation-defining countercultural event Woodstock Festival likely would’ve been pieced together by fragmented tales of who attended had Michael Wadleigh’s three-hour film Woodstock not documented the festival, similarly to Murray Lerner’s Message To Love: The Isle Of Wight Festival that was only released 25 years after the festival took place. You could look to Homecoming for a contemporary example of captured history being made, which details Beyonce’s path to headlining 2018’s Coachella in such spectacular fashion. Then there’s the rather spectacular demise of Fyre Festival, captured in Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, showing the Instagram marketed disaster unfolding before our eyes.
Documentaries like the aforementioned are nothing new, but the recent critical successes of 2015’s Amy - detailing the tragedy of the genius that was Amy Winehouse - and 2012’s Searching For Sugar Man have seen a slew of likewise documentaries and biopics hit cinemas and streaming platforms. Why? Because it’s a proven medium to boost sales, both to old and new fans alike.
Adamant about the value that documentaries offer is Gennaro Castaldo, Communications Director at the British Phonographic Industry said: “A compelling synergy exists between movies and music. With a slew of highly anticipated music documentaries either out, or due for release soon, fans can get close to the icons they love, from Led Zeppelin and Leonard Cohen to Beyoncé and PJ Harvey, so we can expect another surge in sales and streams.”
To a major extent it’s true, warts and all: we’re pulled into the studio and even therapy sessions with Metallica in their 2004 documentary Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, during the making of their difficult, tempestuous album St. Anger, witnessing first-hand how destructive alcoholism, in-fighting, and egos can be for an established band. We’re situated at the centre of Liam and Noel Gallagher’s volatile relationship in 2016’s Supersonic, which details Oasis’s swift rise to greatness and that the band was inevitably a ticking time-bomb. Of Mics and Men commemorates the 25th anniversary of legendary hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan. Told from the perspective of all nine living members of the group, it celebrates the alchemy of each personality and how master chemist RZA managed to harness each person's unique contribution to be greater than the sum of their parts.
We love to live out the stories of how iconic albums were made, no matter how tense creative relationships were at the time or the tribulations that certain artists faced during their creation. We love an underdog story, seeing how our beloved heroes and heroines of music achieved their dreams against the odds. Framing a documentary in this manner is a superb way to market an artist, as their dreams mirror ours. They become relatable when they’re otherwise unattainable, and documentaries offer this unfettered access.
Despite countless documentaries on the varied career of Bob Dylan (Murray Lerner’s The Other Side Of The Mirror, Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home, and DA Pennebaker’s Dont Look Back all deserve an honourable mention), he remains an enigmatic figure of fascination, with Scorsese once again giving a fresh perspective with 2019’s Rolling Thunder Revue. Similarly with The Beatles - arguably the most important pop cultural phenomenon of the 20th century - new documentaries keep coming, with Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back heading for Disney+ later this year.
It remains to be seen whether or not sales of Beats Electronics were directly enhanced by the Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s documentary The Defiant Ones, but given the colourful, intertwining origins stories of both these tenacious figures, the brand was granted with a new level of authenticity that may have not been apparent beforehand. For sure, their chic headphones have been a phenomenal success story, but the documentary gave us insight into the people who founded the company, both of which were authentic figures within the music industry.
Ultimately, the best documentaries are ideal promotional tools, and not just rose-tinted visions of cultural figures. With Netflix pumping out docu’s like GAGA: Five Foot Two, Taylor Swift: Miss Americana, and Travis Scott: Look Mom I Can Fly, the medium will be used in this manner for the foreseeable if the sales and the streams keep growing.
