Miss Americana (2020) on Netflix

R20201h 25mDocumentary Music

Taylor Swift wraps her 2018 Reputation Stadium Tour and moves into making her 2019 album, Lover. Cameras record the studio sessions while she weighs when to speak publicly about her politics.

Netflix4.1/5
IMDb7.4/1026,820 votes
Rotten Tomatoes91%

Trailer

Plot summary

Interviews, studio sessions, home videos, cellphone clips and concert recordings follow Taylor Swift from the close of her 2018 Reputation Stadium Tour into the making of her 2019 album, Lover. They build a portrait that spans several years of her career, with flashbacks reaching further back. She discusses subjects she had kept out of interviews, among them her body image and an eating disorder, her mother Andrea's cancer diagnosis, internet culture and press scrutiny, and a sexual assault trial. She also speaks about going public with her politics and her support for LGBTQ+ rights. Footage of songwriting sessions runs beside her account of what female artists are asked to do.

Cast

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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Miss Americana (2020)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta, the owner and founder of Swift's former label Big Machine Records, blocked her from using older music and performance footage in the documentary. Big Machine denied it, and Swift's representative published an email from a Big Machine executive refusing licenses.
In the leadup to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, "Only the Young" was used in ads for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, with Swift authorizing it free of cost, the first time she allowed her music in a political advertisement.
After its release, the Taylor Swift documentary became the highest-rated Netflix-original biographical documentary by an artist in IMDb history.
Comedian Nikki Glaser apologized on Instagram after the film featured her comments that Swift was "too skinny", writing that she has battled an eating disorder for 17 years and was probably "feeling fat" that day and jealous.
"Only the Young", which plays during the end credits as a promotional single, was written by Swift after the 2018 United States elections but did not make the track-list of her album Lover.
An alternative poster of the film, with a male alter-ego of Swift, appears in the music video for her 2020 single "The Man", showing a "Mr. Americana" poster starring "Tyler Swift" and premiering at the "Mandance Festival".
The Department of English at Queen's University in Ontario offers a fall course, "Taylor Swift's Literary Legacy (Taylor's Version)", whose syllabus requires students to watch Miss Americana alongside other Swift works.