There is no mistaking that I love music; all different kinds. When asked about whether I was watching the big game or not, I quipped “Oh, you mean the football match interrupting the Bad Bunny concert?” This art form has been a part of me since I was a little kid. However, it is time to talk about “stan” culture, the type of toxic fandom that exists within the sane worlds of these artists. These people turn loving a musician into bloodsport. Disproportionately, female pop stars make up their core. There are some men (looking at you, BTS and Justin Bieber). These aren’t the ones we are discussing today. We are here for Taylor Swift and Charli XCX.
End of an Era, on Disney Plus, feels like a culmination of everything Taylor has done up to this point. This year, she has been largely radio silent since the drop of her twelfth album The Life of a Showgirl. A few late-night show appearances here, a podcast there; but little else. This documentary has been the most we have seen of her. The creation of said album makes up a portion of episode five, for which I understand why she didn’t release this until last December.
With this, Swift hands us a seemingly all-access pass to her biggest tour to date. But that doesn’t just mean her. The band, backup singers and dancers become the focus throughout the series. As we meet each of them, we start to see how this crazy concert came to fruition. Kameron’s story of feeling like he wasn’t good enough but Taylor championing him from the start is uplifting. Whyley’s journey to be a part of the Reputation set becomes one whole arc. One segment that was personally poignant was when backup singers Kamilah tells how she lost her mother as the tour was about to start. Woven into this, Taylor talks about her grandmother as the inspiration for the song “Marjorie.” And maybe because my grandmother has the same name or Kamilah’s earnest kinship to this song, you see how much these people became Taylor’s family as much as her real one (who also make an appearance).
This massive undertaking starts to make sense when you see all the people it took to bring it to life. And even though I didn’t buy a ticket, this doc and the concert films still make you feel like you already did.
And now for a dose of cynicism. Charli XCX has been able to turn a jaundiced eye toward the music industry in such a unique way. It is fitting that both her and Swift started out on MySpace, two of the savviest pop stars of the internet age. But with her film The Moment, Charli displays the darker side in this “mockumentary.” Here we have the anti-Eras tour. Not that they are diametrically opposed, in so much as they have different ethos. However, the curated worts of Swift’s doc become more complex as Charli’s fabrications get increasingly dire. Direct hits are taken at the commerce behind the artistry. Label heads seek to expand and milk the available products instead of facilitating new ideas. Vultures exploiting a carcass, played beautifully by Rosanna Arquette and Alexander Skarsgard. For the latter, a concert film director who only wants to make the most palatable version of Charli for mass consumption. Brat is taken to the nth degree in a credit card plot point that becomes more central as the film progresses.
This movie is less funny than satirical, Charli’s bread and butter. There is a particularly ghoulish sequence where she is missing and the director muses on how well Amy Winehouse’s doc sold. Real life friends Rachel Sennott, Julia Fox, and Kylie Jenner float in and out. However, Hailey Benton Gates as her tour assistant Celeste was easily relatable. Thoroughly competent yet undermined at every turn, I don’t think I have ever been more seen by a film in my life. A later scene in which Charli leaves her a voicemail is masterful. Although not in local theaters (where I saw it) at this time, you can catch it on streaming or HBO Max in the near future.
