Taylor Swift review, Miss Americana: As insightful a pop artist documentary as you could hope for

With her Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana, director Lana Wilson has a challenge on her hands. How to break down walls – built up over more than a decade by the media, the music industry, and Swift herself – that keep the world from being able to view Swift as human first, pop star second?

Some reviewers have expressed surprise at just how much insight into Swift’s life this documentary offers. Others have condemned it, reverting back to old criticisms of Swift as calculated, or too much of an enigma.

But for a pop star on Swift’s level, the kind of access Miss Americana offers feels unprecedented. She speaks about her mother’s cancer; she cries as she talks about the global backlash she endured in 2016; and she embraces her boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn.

Perhaps most compelling, though, are the arguments Swift has with music executives, as well as her own father, about why she feels compelled to speak about politics after years of silence. For younger viewers, and those who aren’t from the US, it’s difficult to grasp the scale of the backlash faced by The Dixie Chicks when they criticised then-president George W Bush in 2003. That is, until you see the footage of news hosts calling them “dumb bimbos” and claiming they “deserved to be slapped around”, and placards announcing they should “burn in hell”. Before then, The Dixie Chicks had been the reigning queens of country music, with more than 30 million records sold. But an off-the-cuff remark turned America’s sweethearts into the country’s most-hated. With that in mind, it isn’t all that shocking that Swift – a country-pop star in her early twenties appealing to stone-faced label executives demanding she stay quiet – was reluctant to follow that path.

By incorporating home videos, professionally shot backstage films and to-camera interviews, Miss Americana makes an admirable attempt at covering as much ground as possible. There are moments that feel too well-trodden – the Kanye West feud, or her support of the LBGT+ community. And elsewhere, you wish Swift and Wilson would delve a little deeper, such as when she references her former compulsion to appear “sweet” or “nice” all the time.

Yet the question of how much of Swift's life we're entitled to brings to mind her comment in a recent Guardian interview: “I just need some things that are mine. Just some things.” Miss Americana is as insightful a pop artist documentary as you could hope for, but by keeping some moments private, Swift reminds us that we’ll never know the whole story. And really, what gives us the right to?