1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything

I really loved this series, but they left out so many ground breaking albums. 1971 was the year Led zeppelin released IV with Stairway to Heaven, Pink Floyd released Meddle, The Allman Brother live at the Fillmore East, Janis Joplin released Pearl, Yes released Fragile, Van Morrison released Tupelo Honey, Jethro Tull's Aqualung, and Rod Stewart's Every picture tells a story. There were dozens of other albums that came out that year but these are just a few that helped shape my life. I was ten years old and had just got my first record player. The first 3 albums I bought were Aqualung, Zeppelin IV and the Allman Brothers live at the Filmore East. It was a great year for music.

BUT how can you not talk about Led Zeppelin,Yes, EL&P, or Jethro Tull. Yea yea yea I get that the Stones are the greatest band every and David Bowie is the coolest rock god but do we need to spend most of the episodes focused on them. At least when they looked at black groups the spread it around. It's well worth watching and reliving my high school years but like so many things in the 70s it was way too superficial.

1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything is a beautiful docuseries capturing the reality of a year that Baby Boomers and members of Generation X lived through. In this series, the blooming of unique soundtracks in a turbulent time is captured gracefully, using archival footage and interviews plus voiceovers from influential and iconic figures of the '70s.

The eight-part docuseries focuses on the musicians and soundtracks that shaped the culture and politics of 1971; featured artists include The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, The Who, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed... and even Ravi Shankar. 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything goes to great depth (each episode lasts from 40 to 60 minutes) to illustrate how these musical icons were influenced by the changing tides of history, including the Vietnam War, and how they used their work to inspire hope and change in their not-always-beautiful world. From politically-tinted songs to dreams of unity, the show runs the gamut of songs and emotions. It's truly a beautifully-executed series, though it tends to drag about three quarters of the way into each episode.

The series comes from a filmmaking team that includes figures from documentaries like the Academy Award-winning 'Amy,' and so you know it's going to be an awesome piece of work. Asif Kapadia is the show's series director and serves as executive producer along with James Gay-Rees, David Joseph, and Universal Music Group's Adam Barker. And this undertaking truly is a team effort; the production team has meticulously picked snippets of interviews, radio broadcasts, film from the recording booth and performances, and more, all from 1971, and pieced them together to tell a beautiful, intricate story. As you watch more and more of the show, you begin to get sucked into the world that is being portrayed on screen, a surefire sign that the minds behind 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything did lots of things right! Despite the show dragging a bit here and there, your eyes will surely be glued to the screen whenever you watch the series.

1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything is about resilience and inspiration, or rather inspiration through resilience. As these incredible musicians weathered the tempest that was the titular year, they funneled their energy toward releasing uplifting and rousing music that would echo with the general populace; they truly seized the opportunity. And I feel that it's a great parallel to 2020 and now 2021; certainly, music has played a major part in getting us through the pandemic, and who knows? Maybe 40 years down the road, we'll see a film about 2020: The Year That Music Changed Everything... Again.

I give 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything 4.5 out of 5 stars, and recommend it for ages 14 to 18, plus adults. 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything releases May 21, 2021, on Apple TV+!

Reviewed by Eshaan M., KIDS FIRST!

Overall, an interesting docuseries. My biggest frustration was the opening narration and the lack of introspection of the narrators in general.

The opening scene is narrated by Chrissie Hynde of "The Pretenders". She states how she and her fellow anti-Vietnam War students set fire to the ROTC buildings at Kent State University, because ",The ROTC was a military presence on our university... The military presence had to go." Kent State University is a state-run (and therefore government-run/funded) university. The ROTC cadets were her fellow students, most participating in ROTC solely for scholarship purposes to be able to afford a college education, and were not government employees / had NOTHING to do with the Vietnam War. The burning of the ROTC buildings at Kent State is what DIRECTLY led to the National Guard presence on campus, which caused the Kent State shootings. At NO POINT does she take responsibility for or show remorse or regret for her and her fellow protestors' actions. Had the ROTC buildings not been set on fire, the National Guard would not have been called in, and students would not have died.

I think we can all acknowledge that the Vietnam War was something the US should not have been involved in, but the hateful and purposeful destruction of property and abuse of ROTC cadets and US soldiers at that time was (and still is) deplorable. Hate and violence do not make other hate and violence okay! "Make love, not war" isn't just something to preach but to practice as well. Self-righteous hippies gave birth to self-righteous millennials.

I disagree with some of the other reviews about this documentary I thought was really well done. A lot of people said there was too much context about the music and it made the documentary feel stuffy well I actually felt that the context was appropriately put together and flowed very well. I really enjoyed watching some of this footage that I've never seen before.