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Nearly everyone has heard about Woodstock and the US Festival, but the same can’t be said for the Memphis Country Blues Festival. Depending on the year, the annual gathering held in Memphis between 1966 and 1970, was the place to see and hear genre icons. Country-blues guitarists Furry Lewis and Mississippi Fred McDowell, along with blues and R&b character Rufus Thomas, all played there, as did folk and rock guitar heroes Johnny Winter and John Fahey. The Rolling Stones were even invited to appear (more on that later), and some...

The story of Lil Nas X’s rise from internet shitposter to one of our most innovative pop stars testifies to the musician’s tenacity, strategy and unwavering faith in himself. The Georgia native was only 20 years old when “Old Town Road,” his infectious country-trap song, went viral in 2019. Videos of children, teens and adults belting “I’m gonna take my house to the old town road” mushroomed across the internet. More than writing a hit, Lil Nas X encapsulated a new kind of road to stardom.

It’s a shame, then, that Carlos López Estrada and Zac Manuel’s plodding documentary Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero doesn’t probe its subject more. The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, is an anthemic document organized around Lil Nas X’s tour of the same name and split into three loose acts. It articulates, quite well, the...