You know, at Christmas or other big celebrations, and you have eaten way too much? And you think you‘ll have something light next? A salad? Something refreshing? Well, from time to time, we need to do the same thing… with music.

We delivered a list in December, and we’ve got some more to recommend. Whiplash is a high rewatch for us, so that stays; the rest are new.

WHIPLASH (Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV)

Our favourite. We will say that upfront.

There is something so primal about watching sweat and blood make their way down a stick onto a snare. The nights, the days, the hours, the paid and unpaid tutoring, the countless auditions, the calluses, the self-doubt, and the lack of support from other people who should be in your corner. For most of us, we won’t ever know what it is to have that kind of drive.

J.K. Simmons is in some of the finest form you will ever see. We loved him a lot in this one. Miles Teller will always be this kid to us, this protege, bleeding on a drum kit at 3am, not the shoulder-shaking rookie in Top Gun. You’ll know Caravan note-for-note by the end, and thank Duke Ellington for it. Check out the OMPS.

The question the film refuses to answer is the best thing about it: was it worth it? It cuts, and it is perfect. But you know that it was.

"There are no two words in the English language more harmful than 'good job.'" Fletcher

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (Hulu, Disney+)

Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, 1961 to 1965, Greenwich Village to Newport, going electric. Dylan personally approved the film and said Chalamet would be completely believable as him. He was not wrong.

The film takes liberties, jumbles the timeline, invents things that may or may not have happened. But it understands something true about Dylan that a Wikipedia-accurate biopic never could: the man was always becoming something else, and everyone around him kept trying to catch up. Edward Norton as Pete Seeger is fabulous. Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez was a dream.

If you have watched it and come away frustrated by the historical inaccuracies, we get it. If you have not watched it and think you might not care about Bob Dylan, watch it anyway.

"Even if you've heard the songs ten thousand times, one of the most remarkable things about this film is remembering the sensation of hearing them for the first time." Roger Ebert Reviews

SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE (Disney+, Hulu)

This is the one we keep thinking about. Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen, recording Nebraska in his bedroom on a four-track cassette recorder, coming off the back of massive arena tours, completely lost. If you watched JAW in The Bear, you know what you’re getting straight off the bat. One of our favorite notes was that his Bear co-star mentioned he was casually learning to play guitar while filming intense chef scenes.

The film covers one specific period: the making of one of the most stripped-back, haunted albums in American music history, made by a man who had every resource available to him and chose to record alone in a room because that was the only honest thing left to do. Jeremy Strong as his manager Jon Landau is extraordinary, Stephen Graham as his father is excellent, and White's performance is so committed that Springsteen himself reportedly could not tell his own voice from White's on some tracks. He personally wanted White for the role after watching The Bear and never considered anyone else.

Critics were mixed. Audiences were not. Box office was a disaster, considered too niche and ‘dark’. But for us, it is excellent. If you want to understand what it costs to make something true, this is the film.

"Focusing on Bruce Springsteen's lowest emotional ebb, this brooding biopic benefits from Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong's stellar performances." Rotten Tomatoes

NOAH KAHAN: OUT OF BODY (Netflix)

Fresh as of April 13. Won the audience award at SXSW. And it is the most honest music documentary we have watched in a long time. It is easily up there with Lewis Capaldi, which we mentioned in December.

What could have been a Fenway Park victory lap becomes something much more uncomfortable. Kahan opens up about body dysmorphia, the pressure of following Stick Season (which we love), his father's brain injury, putting his family's private lives into his songs without fully asking them first.

The general store in his hometown sells his merch. The clerk admits he does not listen to his music. Very Vermont. Very honest. It is a nice reminder of the cost of some of the most emotionally and intellectually demanding music, and how hard it was to get there in the first place. Yes, we cried a bit.

"Nothing was off limits. Like, absolutely nothing. I was always waiting for him to push back and he never did." Director Nick Sweeney

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (Disney+)

Yes, the timeline is wrong. Yes, certain things are invented. Yes, Queen fans have opinions about all of it.

But the Live Aid sequence at the end is one of the best twenty minutes ever put on film. Rami Malek recreates the Wembley performance almost note-for-note, and if you know the original footage, the parallel is startling. It is not the most honest music biopic ever made. It is, however, one of the most fun.

"Like Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody is three parts good but not terribly exciting, and one part absolute joyful, fabulous entertainment that makes you forget everything else around it." Metacritic

ONE SHOT WITH ED SHEERAN (Netflix)

Directed by Philip Barantini, the director of Adolescence. One continuous take, we’re big fans of this style. Ed Sheeran walking through New York City for an hour, performing his greatest hits on sidewalks, in subways, outside someone's wedding, all captured without a single cut.

We are going to be honest. We did not expect to be moved by this. We were. Not because of the scale of it, though the technical achievement is genuinely impressive. Because there is a moment somewhere in the middle where you realize you are watching someone who has been doing this since they were a teenager on street corners and sofa surfing in his mates’ houses, and the gap between that and Fenway Park is both enormous and completely irrelevant, because the thing he is doing has not changed at all.

It is the opposite of everything else on this list. It’s not stress-packed, or one man going through it the whole time. Just a man who is very good at what he does, doing it, outside, for an hour, in one take. Sure, it is cheesy, and some parts are awkward, but that just seems so Ed.

"I think this is the best thing I've ever done in my career, in terms of scale and impressiveness." Ed Sheeran

METAL LORDS (Netflix)

Written by the Game of Thrones showrunner D.B. Weiss. Executive music produced by Tom Morello. Cameos from Kirk Hammett, Scott Ian and Rob Halford. Two metal misfits and a cellist. A Battle of the Bands.

It is not trying to be anything other than what it is, which is a film about what it feels like to love music that nobody around you cares about, and find the two other people who feel the same way. Critics called it lightweight. They are not wrong. That is also not the point. If you were goth, metal, or anything not mainstream before it became cool, this is a nice watch. And, it’s pretty funny.

"Weird kids exist and that's okay." Rotten Tomatoes audience review, and that’s kinda the whole film in a sentence.

And while we are here, we also want to mention what we believe is one of the best movie soundtracks of all time: Queen of the Damned.