1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything

While it did indeed cover a great many bands, songs, and issues of the day, one INCREDIBLY HUGE and surprising ommission was the biggest rock song of not only 1971, but all of the 1970s, and even some would claim to this day, the greatest rock song of all time... STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN by Led Zeppelin. I simply cannot understand how an 8 part series about the music of 1971 could ignore this very important and influential song.

I'm always interested in music documentaries, and there have been some good ones over the years. This was lacking. It didn't know what it wanted to be: a documentary about how culture influenced the music or how the music influenced the culture. And if it tried to make a case that the relationship was symbiotic, it fell short. Their was no real "through line." There were interesting sections or stories but in the end, it just felt forced.

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.

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.

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!