Let’s be honest, music documentaries are improving greatly, and I’m really happy about it. A fan, a listener, or someone who just likes to hear a story can benefit from the docs. This is the best time for music documentaries to exist by far. These docuseries and movies portray, from K-pop icons to rock legends, the real world behind the music, which is the sweat, the tears, and the triumph, unlike the bright lights of the stage. For maximum suspense, I have here the 10 best music documentaries you can stream right now in descending order.
10. L-POP – A K-Pop Fan’s Dream (Disney+)
L-POP gives you the right amount of theatric and loving elements if you were ever submerged in fan culture or if you have only wondered what it is like. The story of Andrea, a K-pop fan, torn between her parents’ wish for her to be a dentist and her secret plan to create a cover dance tea, is the six-part series main focus. It turns out to be half mockumentary, half coming-of-age, and fully about going after what you love, regardless of how difficult it is, with the added element of her sister documenting every moment. It is funny, touching, and, to a surprise, very applicable.
9. BLACKPINK THE MOVIE – Five Years, One Phenomenon (Hulu/Disney+)
Besides what is normally expected from a concert movie, BLACKPINK THE MOVIE presents a cinematic homage to the band’s voyage to the sky in a very short time. The movie documents the girls’ both their energetic live shows and their strong yet sensitive nature off-stage with the help of scenes and footage from the interview, the performance, and the wrap-up. A love letter for the fans, and an introduction for the new converts to a giant global act.
8. TOMORROW X TOGETHER: Our Lost Summer – K-Pop’s New Wave (Disney+)
Our Lost Summer follows the world tour of TXT, capturing the band’s every exhilaration, despair, and even the brilliant light of the stage. It is a fairytale for the band and an inside view for the fans, starting from rehearsals in Seoul and ending with the packed stadiums in America. Watching them deal with fame, fatigue, and artistic growth while at the same time being part of the history of K-pop would be like watching the next chapter of K-pop history unfold right in front of you.
7. PSY Summer Swag 2022 – Chaos, Confetti, and Water Cannons (Hulu)
Was Gangnam Style PSY’s pinnacle? Well, I don’t think so. PSY Summer Swag 2022 took you to one of the most electrifying concert tours, where water was an inseparable part of the performance and attracted hundreds of thousands of fans throughout Korea. With the fans getting soaked, the nonstop giggles, and the energy moving from one to another, this film is part concert documentary, part aquatic spectacle, and total PSY.
6. SUGA: Road to D-DAY & j-hope IN THE BOX – Solo BTS Spotlights (Disney+)
Two movies, two artists, one common spirit of reinvention. SUGA: Road to D-DAY takes SUGA on a worldwide creative odyssey as he constructs his solo album, walking the line between fatigue and innovation. At the same time, j-hope IN THE BOX documents the all-consuming focus of j-hope’s 200-day road to his solo debut, topped off by his jaw-dropping Lollapalooza performance. Combined, they get to the personal and creative aspects of two members of the world’s largest group going out on their own.
5. BTS Monuments: Beyond The Star – A Decade of Greatness (Disney+)
At eight episodes over ten years, BTS Monuments: Beyond The Star is not only a documentary, it’s a time capsule. Blending unseen footage, interviews, and introspection, it tracks how seven young men made ambition a worldwide phenomenon. It’s thoughtful, touching, and a reminder that even superstars are human with hopes and fears.
4. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour – Pop’s Biggest Show (Disney+)
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is really the thing of her time, and the documentary has dropped every bit of her time into its net. The whole affair, from the production to the seating, covering a whole decade, is a fool of trickery to be able to feel the stadium without actually being there. The bandwagoners are bound to love it, while those not familiar with her work will still get a glimpse of the kind of whirlwind one artist can stir when selling millions of records; in short, this film is pop culture at its glibbest and triumphant.
3. Bono: Stories of Surrender – A Life in 8K (Apple TV+)
Stories of Surrender, offstage and on, a solo show by Bono, profoundly visual, the movie rethinks the concept of a single-person stage show as a journey through music, memory, and activism. Andrew Dominik is directing, the picturing is a hybrid of storytelling and play in an absorbing 8K experience (that is, Apple Vision Pro users alone will be fully immersed). Basically, it is an exposure, a very human one, and satiric even of the Bono you never knew, with insights into his path, his success, and his shortcomings.
2. Summer of Soul – The Festival That Rewrote History (Disney+)
Questlove’s Summer of Soul chronicles the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and, in doing so, has saved a major event that went down but was almost completely overshadowed by history. Of course, it had to include the likes of Nina Simone and Stevie Wonder, and the result is nothing short of an exhilarating fusion of history and music that charts the very foundation of the Black experience. It is far better than just one of the greatest music documentaries ever made – it is simply unmissable.
1. The Beatles: Get Back – Legends at Work (Disney+)
Pertinent to the soaring benchmarks of music documentaries is Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back. The Beatles in person from the Let It Be sessions video materials that were just recently rejuvenated and very abundantly seen through the very eyes of the fans in the final, yt, fragile, and sort of still-brilliant chapter, are exactly the kind of stuff that pop history is in the making here. The whole gamut of the ban,d concerned with almost inevitable splintering of creative tussles, tensions, laughs, and magic performed by no less than the Beatles themselves, making them forever timeless, will be very much a part of what you will be able to witness.
So here are those ten music films that delve deeper than just the tunes. They touch on the issues of the times, chaos, grit, and coming together. Whether you’re busting a move with PSY, reaching for the tissues with SUGA, or totally blown away by The Beatles, these pictures underline the fact that music still delivers a harder punch than any other form of art in the cinema.