Still via Stop Making Sense/Filmgrab
Pranav Trewn finds peace in his vinyl record collection.
As the general public’s concern over Covid gradually receded in the last two years, a number of pandemic-era developments proved to have staying power. Most airlines have continued to leave change fees in the past, and my neighborhood in San Francisco still has at least one parklet on every commercial block.
Thankfully, a norm that did not persist was the live streamed concert. Since artists have been able to return to stages with live audiences, I have never once thought to myself, “I wish I could just stay home and watch this on a screen.”
How ironic, then, is my love of concert films? Once a hallmark of bands’ legacies and a staple notch in a long career arc, cinematic recordings of live performances felt increasingly inessential as short phone videos proliferated on YouTube – then Instagram, then TikTok. Lately, (and almost certainly not independent from the ballooning costs of concert tickets), more and more artists have seemingly found an appreciation for the format of the concert film.
The trend predated, but certainly peaked upon, the release of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour film – one of the highest grossest movies of any genre in 2023. Fellow upper echelon pop stars have followed her lead. While Taylor was technically beaten to the stadium-to-screen adaptation by Beyonce’s sale to Netflix of her singularly executed Coachella headlining performance, Beyonce was catching up to Taylor when she brought to theaters Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé. Since then, Lady Gaga, Olivia Rodrigo, Elton John, and Billy Joel have all struck streaming deals to showcase their own sold out shows for wider audiences.
Most recently, Bjork announced her Cornucopia movie, several years after the first Cornucopia shows were held. And while concert films are usually announced at the end of, or at least during the featured tour, this month Oasis preempted their upcoming reunion run with the news it would have its own recorded accompaniment.
Compared to the early 2010s pop star documentary (see Katy Perry, Justin Bieber), these films have adhered more to a strictly-performance approach. They contain far fewer camera confessionals, backstage insights into the crew and production, or clips of fans waiting in line and gushing in excitement before the show. Instead, concert films play as though they’re happening in real-time, documenting the full concert experience.
Sure, a few songs are missing here and there from the original live setlist (but might come back in a deluxe edit if the demand is high enough), and there are of course very intentional and flattering directional choices on what to highlight and how in the show. But overall, the focus is on giving fans a simulacrum of having gone in person themselves. The pivot to this approach is in line with the sweeping success of the re-release of Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads game-changing pinnacle of the form that grossed more the second time around then it did in its initial box office run.
Concert films are distinct from live albums, a format which has never truly faltered in popularity but has also rarely moved the cultural needle the same way. They give fans not just a snapshot of an artist’s performance prowess at a moment in time, but a window into their broader cultural moment. And you don’t need stadium status to get in on the action. Earlier this month, Swedish cloud rap innovator Yung Lean released the feature length Yung Lean Live at Globen – Stockholm, Sweden (March 1, 2025). Across 100 minutes of footage capturing the recent show, we get to see what his fans look like in his hometown, the set design that he drapes around himself to amplify his earnest and elegiac aura, and his instinctual dance moves when he’s grooving to his own beats.
Yung Lean is an artist I have long felt I should respect given the critics I respect the opinion of, but the appeal has never translated to my own ear. I could not get myself behind the supposed innovations of Psykos or Stardust, and whatever is happening that inspires folks to call themselves “drainers” has fully evaded me.
Yet in watching the 28-year old captivate the Swedes packed into the Avicii Arena, something finally clicked. I saw for myself the captivating camaraderie of the Drain Gang working in synergy, locking into Lean’s physical interplay with Bladee and Ecco2k and Thaiboy Digital. I caught strains of Nirvana in the soft aggression of Lean’s balladry that unlocked for me how those songs capture a crowd in a hypnotic, “lighters up” trance. As he closed the show with the laconic anthem “Ginseng Strip 2002”, I got how it’s come to be Lean’s calling card that was more popular in 2022 than it was when it first put Lean into the spotlight in 2013.
This extra, unmediated context is important in a way that I think is distinctly relevant to our modern condition. The immediacy of our age has led to a collective consumption defined by pre-determined, subliminal impressions. Event albums are heard on the day of their release for the purpose of making snap judgments as license to participate in “the conversation,” and those judgments are rarely revisited. Artists are increasingly known for memes before their music (think BRAT summer, or almost any TikTok hit) and your perception of the memes are what is most likely to inform your ultimate opinion of the music.
Fandom can feel like a religion. Similarly, the factions between sects are frequently exercised through willful ignorance rather than an informed dissent. This is understandable to a degree; it’s difficult to keep up with everything we are subjected to these days, so filtering by exclusion makes the burden of staying up-to-date more manageable. Who cares if everyone is talking up the hot new hyperpop or rage rap album when you’ve already decided long ago those genres aren’t for you?
These mostly aesthetic reactions have their place, and I long for the halcyon days of music blogging defined by takes so strong you’d think the recipient musician had personally wronged the critic. I also believe, however, that extending curiosity to music that exists beyond one’s personal, often-algorithmically enclosed bubble is a virtue worth striving for. I have found concert films to be an effective antidote when I can feel my willingness to engage with a cultural movement closing up.
In a way that clicking casually through an album on Spotify or scrolling through an artist’s Instagram does not communicate, concert films feel like a more immersive, intuitive way to understand another subculture – its followers, language, and norms. They thrust us into the momentum, one we might not have been privy to experience on its own terms otherwise. Where the livestream-era made me feel increasingly trapped behind the screen, this resurgence of concert films has opened me up more fully to the world beyond them.
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