1971: L'anno in cui la musica ha cambiato tutto

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!

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.

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.

I enjoyed much of what I saw in this series. The archival footage let me see things like Bowie's appearance at Glastonbury that I had never encountered before. I had seen footage of the Stones in the south of France in '71 but this offered some new clips and new background, which was interesting. The same holds true for the emergence of Elton John in the US that year.

The biggest flaw for me is that this often seems to take on the binary sort of thinking that has afflicted our political discourse of late and applied that to 1971 issues. It seems you were either for Nixon or a supporter of the extreme left. Obviously that isn't the case, but that is how it seems to be presented here. The same holds true for the episode dealing with the Black Panthers, Angela Davis and the Weather Underground subversives. It does a poor job of laying out the whole spectrum of positions with the various subtleties and instead goes for the simple political bad/good in presenting the characters. It seems to not understand that you could be opposed to Nixon and his policies without being a communist or far-left supporter. The same holds true for the segments about the UK underground press, which seemed to devote a lot of time to a group that was mostly appealing to an extremist fringe and did not make much impact on the greater society in the UK.

I was slightly baffled by the amount of time given to An American Family, the PBS series featuring Pat and Bill Loud and their children. While it was certainly a groundbreaking piece of work that helped illustrate the social changes in society at the time, I thought this series was about music, and so it struck me odd to find so much footage of it here. At least the producers do not sidestep the point that drug use was the cause of the downfall of many of the artists who had emerged around this time, showing that in all the years since, some things really never change in the music and entertainment business.

With all that said, the series is still fairly entertaining to watch, and really is mostly suffering from a misleading title. While some music certainly did lead to societal change, the series does not focus on that exclusively and takes the viewer to other areas where they probably should not have gone.