Magic montages

The life of a pop star moves so quickly that pop documentaries are often 70% montage. One Direction’s This Is Us and Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never both feature so many quick edits they’re essentially slideshows, while Lady Gaga’s Five Foot Two – in which she “gave everyone access to what I wanted everyone to have access to” – includes a rapid-fire montage of fans screaming “yaaaas Gaga” at her before she escapes to the safety of a waiting car and closes the door. It’s suddenly quiet. She’s alone at last. Afraid to let the crushing symbolism hang undefined, however, Gaga breaks the silence. “Silence,” she says.

Honing your craft

An authentic pop doc needs an authentic display of pure unadulterated creativity, so we get Zayn recording ad libs for Best Song Ever in a makeshift hotel studio involving an up-ended mattress in This Is Us; Beyoncé emoting her way through 4’s I Care while clutching her headphones in the anaemic Life Is But a Dream (director: Beyoncé Knowles); Gaga tinkering on a dusty piano in Five Foot Two; and the Backstreet Boys “jamming” in Show ’Em What You’re Made Of, AKA pop’s Some Kind of Monster.

Gaga for Gaga ... watch the trailer for Five Foot Two.

Buff love

You want to see the person behind the facade? You want warts and all? You want to see Harry Styles topless? OK, great, because there are a lot of nipples in This Is Us, the pretence being that everyone’s working so hard for the fans that no one’s got time for T-shirts. For Gaga, however, she simply feels better once she relieves herself of her bikini top during a poolside meeting, while good friend Madonna “accidentally” loses her bra in Truth Or Dare.

Friends in high places

Truth Or Dare’s main celebrity cameo is Madonna’s then-boyfriend Warren Beatty, but it’s Kevin Costner who causes Madge to stick her fingers down her throat after he describes her Blond Ambition show as “neat”. While Never Say Never boasts everyone from David Beckham to Boyz II Men, This Is Us conjures up the most “huh?” moment when Carl from Up, AKA Martin Scorsese, mumbles “I like your stuff” to One Direction in their dressing room, the waft of Lynx and stale farts (we learn elsewhere that Niall’s are deadly) apparently overcoming him.

Justin time ... Bieber in Never Say Never. Photograph: Allstar/MTV Films

Family portrait

Whether it’s Katy Perry’s proud gran putting on a Teenage Dream-embossed silk bomber in Part of Me, or home footage (an essential pop doc visual signifier) of Beyoncé and Solange singing along to the Cardigans’ Lovefool in Life Is But a Dream, family plays an important role in bringing humanity to these portraits. Dads are specifically important: Beyoncé fires hers (as her manager, not as her actual dad); Lady Gaga cries with hers; and Madonna chats to hers while wearing a shower cap and talking in an accent somewhere between Italian and Kate Winslet.

Spat, battle, pop

Every film needs a villain. Gaga has a couple: there’s her bad hip and her “reductive” spat with Madonna, which is tackled with delicious candour. “I just want Madonna to fucking push me up against a wall and kiss me and tell me I’m a piece of shit,” she muses. In Truth Or Dare, Madonna fights common decency after the police threaten to shut down a show if she insists on fake masturbating during Like a Virgin (she does it anyway, obvs). Meanwhile, Bieber’s enemy is a sore throat, Beyoncé’s is perfection itself and One Direction’s chief villain is personality void Liam Payne.

Cat power ... Katy Perry in a sombre moment from 2012’s Part of Me. Photograph: Allstar/MTV Films

Tragic moments

Pop stars are human beings and sometimes life comes and takes a massive shit on their doorsteps. The colour is completely drained out of Part of Me’s candy floss glow when Russell Brand breaks up with Katy Perry by text. Most of Gaga’s documentary is overshadowed either by her chronic hip pain or the death of her aunt Joanne, while Beyoncé discloses an earlier miscarriage and hints at Jay-Z’s rumoured infidelity in Life Is But a Dream. This Is Us has tearful moments – Zayn buying his mum a house, for example – but the saddest scene is one sharpened by the passing of time. During a camping trip in a Swedish forest, Zayn asks: “Do you think we’re still gonna be mates [when this ends]?” “Yeah definitely,” is the resounding reply. They break your hearts, they really do.

Five Foot Two is on Netflix now