Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, your anybody who says my show is neat has to go.

Of music news and criticism, I am your host, John Caramonica.

We're listening to a little bit of Billie Eilish, it's called No Time to Die, it's the

Bond song, came out last year.

We're talking about pop star documentaries this week, I wanted to listen to that song

because that song provides a kind of interesting plot point in the recent Billie Eilish documentary,

which is on Apple Plus or whatever the Apple film streaming services.

There's a scene where Billie is recording vocals and is doing a super serious vocal and

then she's complaining to Phineas about having to do that vocal and she's going to get

made fun of on the internet for like, I don't know, for like trying hard or something.

Anyway, it's like a very revealing moment in a documentary that I think is mostly good,

although I don't know how revealing it is, but it's mostly good.

But it got me thinking about the tension between who's in control here, is the pop star in control,

is the label in control, is the director in control, is the streaming service in control,

and why are there so many pop star documentaries?

There are so many of them.

I spent yesterday watching the Mendes film, I watched the Blackpink film, all the Demi episodes,

just enough Ariana to know that I didn't need to watch the rest of the Ariana film, but

watching all these films and when I was thinking of someone to bring on this episode, I was

like, I need someone who has watched all these films, because to be frank, there are plenty

of reasons not to watch all these films, but I was like, surely someone has thought about

this as a subgenre of cinema.

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