I'm amazed by the reviews here saying that the show becomes increasingly irrelevant to pop as it goes on. The first few episodes are predominantly recent subjects, but pop predates the nineties. Pop, for all its popularity, is an underexplored subject of musicological nerd-dom. This show covers the rise of the boy band, autotune and the question of when technology becomes a crutch, why the swedish are so good at writing hits, country pop crossovers and where the line is between a niche genre and the mainstream, music festivals, pop as a vehicle for protest/social change, and the original production line model of hit songwriting (brill building) that paved the way to the modern pop collaboration style. How this isn't pop I don't know - maybe most of pop's audience today thinks it's a new genre that exists in a vacuum separate from the rest of 20th century music history - hence the need for a documentary like this. Ultimately if a music documentary has Sam Dunn's name on it then you know it'll do justice (see also metal headbangers journey; hip hop evolution and more).
Review of This Is Pop
