This Is Buzz (2026) Review: The History of MTV Sound

Once upon a time in the ‘90s, two whiz kids of MTV, Mark Pellington and John Klein, decided to create Buzz, a short-lived series on MTV that captured the music scene of the era. This is Buzz, the newly directed documentary from Pellington, tells the story of the rise and fall of this music news sensation, and where and why it didn’t completely work.

It’s not difficult to try and pinpoint what makes this unique. A commentary on the heyday of MTV is not simply analyzing what made or broke a long-lost music channel that dictated who was “in” and who was “meh”, but it’s also an allegory for how far we’ve come as nations, with respect to the place music and film take place in people’s lives. What drives change: is it the art or the big corporates supplying the artists? How different is the New York of today, with its mega huge towers for the rich and the corporate flagship stores, from the punk-rock, graffiti-covered New York of the ‘90s? This documentary is not a story of music, but it’s a witness to the times.

Admittedly, nostalgia bait by now is worn out and downright annoying. But what does a film like that tell us, not just about its subjects or how music has evolved over the years, but about how creativity as an art form has drastically diverged from how it was in the past? For starters, talented people were hired in the right positions. There was no AI or deepfake to hide behind it, so when there were creative directors or mixers and editors, they were in because they had “it”. The spark. The knack. The flair. That was all Klein and Pellington had at the time, as was their understanding of the taste of the young ones. Revolutionary as it was, there was nothing pretentious about the era of MTV, which eventually led to Buzz.

In the past, editors edited and mixed sounds and videos from musicians’ music videos to create promos, intermissions between the songs playing—or shall we say streaming—24/7 on the channel. Now the songs are chopped and screwed in fan edits that studios salivate over on TikTok or Instagram, so it’s like Klein and Pellington were the founding fathers of the babyseed of current entertainment consumption.

But where does Buzz come into play? That’s where the immersive documentary filmmaking continues, digging heavily into the mythology of our central subject: Buzz, a show about young people and the change they want to see in the world. Pellington doesn’t just have a traditional interview-centric documentary, but an immersive psychedelic experience, a portal into two brilliant, buzzed minds. It’s both intoxicating and dangerous, a thrill ride from start to finish. It also allows the people who missed Buzz when it was launched to relive that unique viewing experience.

There’s a revelation in this Pellington-directed film, and that is the sound. It demystifies the lore behind MTV as one of the former biggest music hubs on planet Earth, and shows viewers how its distinct sound, vibe, and style were created. Releasing information about making this sound from scratch, and showing how computers in the past were akin to magicians-a newfound discovery that no one imagined would become a staple of modern life-but because of them, these unique soundbites shaped the structure that was MTV in the popular culture and collective consciousness of people worldwide.

As fun as it is to watch Klein and Pellington now, as two old men like everybody’s dads, This Is Buzz is not simply their story of success and failure. It’s more like a mixtape of the ‘90s, a collage of songs mashed together to create a hybrid that eerily foreshadows many of today’s video streaming platforms. Does it work? Mainly for its creative execution, but it still struggles with the commentary it is currently trying to sell to the viewers.