AP’s top music documentaries of 2024: Taylor Swift, ABBA, the Boss and more — and where to watch

NEW YORK — Once you’ve made your way through AP’s list of 2024’s best films and dried those tears after bingeing “I Am: Celine Dion” — we won’t judge — it’s time to hand over the remote. “The Beach Boys” “The Beach Boys,” by director Frank Marshall, tells the story of three Wilson brothers — Brian, Carl and Dennis — along with cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine, and how their sunny Southern California sound became beloved the world over through classics like “I Get Around,” “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows.” The film includes extensive new interviews as well as draws from archival footage to give the perspectives of Carl Wilson, who died from cancer in 1998, and Dennis Wilson, who drowned in a Los Angeles-area harbor in 1983. “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” It is an astonishing display of transparency in the music business: In 2019, music manager Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings announced that it was acquiring Big Machine Label Group, which released Taylor Swift’s first six studio albums and owns her masters. A new two-part documentary, “Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood” interrogates the deal — and offers digestible details for those hoping to learn more about what went awry, from varying perspectives. Both “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” and the non-narrative “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” topped AP’s 2023 best of list, for breaking the fourth wall and artfully created a near-replica of the live experience.