Louder: The Soundtrack of Change, now streaming on Max, is a documentary, produced by Selena Gomez and Stacey Abrams and directed by Kristi Jacobson, that tracks the voices of women in song throughout the 20th century and beyond. Gomez and Abrams met during the 2020 presidential election cycle, and this doc builds on their shared belief in music as one of the most powerful tools women have in the ongoing fight for visibility and advocacy. Louder features archival footage and performances from across the decades, as well as new interviews with journalists and writers, Gomez and Abrams themselves, and musicians including Rhiannon Giddens, Melissa Etheridge, H.E.R., Linda Ronstadt, Mickey Guyton, and Kathleen Hanna.
The Gist: “Women have used their music as a form of resistance for decades,” Selena Gomez says at the outset of Louder: The Soundtrack of Change. “Singing the truth, even when the world is telling you to shut up.” Gomez is interviewed extensively throughout the doc, as is politician and activist Stacey Abrams, who adds that music, in women’s hands, can be the throughline for activism, advocacy, and a major encouraging factor in keeping up the fight. This is all over footage from the 2020 Women’s March on Washington, which rallied in the face of increasing conservative pressure to overturn Roe V. Wade, and quotes from eras past that were equally fraught for the rights of women and people of color. “How can you be an artist,” Nina Simone asks in an archival interview, “and not reflect the times?”
Louder: The Soundtrack of Change then takes its fight decade by decade, as the extremes of pay disparity for women helped fuel the Women’s liberation movement in the 1970s, Dolly Parton put a beat to women’s empowerment with “9 to 5” in the 1980s, and Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill led the wave for women’s inclusion and music community respect with the Riot Grrl wave of the 1990s. “I was so full of this crisis and rage and pain,” Hanna says in an interview for Louder. “How could I process that without music?”
As it moves through the years, Louder is tactful in illustrating how women’s voices have always faced silencing, and cites numerous examples of how that vulnerability became an element in the expression of power and strength. It’s a stance free of genre labeling, too – from Helen Reddy with “I Am Woman” in 1972 and Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out” in 1980, to how women in hip-hop, from MC Lyte and Queen Latifiah to TLC and Salt-N-Pepa, boldly worked to reclaim their sexual power from gangsta rap and a male-dominated music industry. As Gomez and Abrams emphasize in Louder that it’s not like the fight is at all over, music journalist Suzy Exposito highlights how important it is that Gen Z pop stars of today – Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift – continue to be outspoken against “this really regressive wave of patriarchy.”
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? A number of recent documentaries could be considered for a further reading on the themes in Louder. Like TLC Forever, about the groundbreaking female trio. Or It’s Only Life After All, where Indigo Girls tell their story. Or the Netflix doc Power, about the history of policing in America. Or The Janes, a doc about a group of women who, out of necessity, founded an underground abortion network.
Performance Worth Watching: Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens is a thoughtful, pointed interview in Louder: The Soundtrack of Change as she describes her experience reading and interpreting the narratives of enslaved people from her home state of North Carolina. “I didn’t know what to do with these emotions, thinking about these women and the lives they had to lead. So I started writing songs.” Louder also features portions of Giddens in performance on her banjo. And when you heard that instrument on Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” that was also Giddens.
Memorable Dialogue: “I really believe that music is the purest form of identity expression that exists,” music journalist Puja Patel says in Louder, over vintage performances from artists like Diana Ross, Chaka Khan, and Tina Turner. “These self-ownership anthems were celebrating what had been won by women, while also demanding so much more.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: With a runtime of just over an hour, Louder: The Soundtrack of Change isn’t trying to be a triple gatefold album of protest. It doesn’t have the space for that. The documentary is more about joining a conversation that’s been happening for decades, even if mainstream media and especially the political establishment weren’t interested in really listening. It highlights a wealth of truly powerful songs, lauds the women who made and sung that material as fearless pioneers – it might not be a triple album, but the selections here would make a seriously cool mixtape – and includes brief bits of interview that support its narrative thrust while highlighting a diversity of women’s voices.
That stance can be inspirational enough, and certainly for anyone watching who is looking for either an introduction to some of these artists, or the encouragement to know that they aren’t alone in the fight. “I don’t give a damn what people think,” Chaka Khan says now, as she reflects on the audacity and funkiness of “I’m Every Woman,” her solo debut in 1978. “This is the truth. My truth. And I want to hear yours.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Just in time for probably the most momentous presidential election ever, Louder: The Soundtrack of Change presents a powerful survey of how women throughout history have harnessed the power of music to express their strength in politics and the culture.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.