Placebo are approaching 30 years of influencing alternative music and culture, making it an ideal time to explore the Placebo documentary This Search For Meaning. One year on from the film’s theatrical release, it is now available as part of a deluxe set for home viewing. Here we check out the release, including its formats, content, and celebrity guest contributors.

Placebo documentary: This Search For Meaning

Exactly a year after its cinematic premiere, the Placebo documentary, This Search For Meaning, is out now SO Recordings. It is a four disc deluxe collection across a six-panel digipak. It features the documentary on blu-ray and DVD, plus two audio CDs; This is What You Wanted – Live In Mexico City and a bonus-track edition of Placebo’s most recent album Never Let Me Go. Rounding out the collection is a pull-out poster book.

This Placebo documentary was directed by Scottish award-winning filmmaker Oscar Sansom and was released in theatres in October 2024.

The film explores the lyrics and themes of Placebo’s songs, the inevitable impacts of embracing a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, and their growth as a band and as people. This means covering broad and deep topics like addiction, gender identity, societal apathy, surveillance, and even the climate crisis.

“They were a frontier of fearless representation.” – Joe Talbot [Idles]

As Placebo co-founder, lead vocalist and primary songwriter Brian Molko says in the documentary’s trailer, “what do you do when you’re an outsider in your own family? You create a surrogate family. What do you feel like you don’t belong in the world? You create your own world.”

“I was trying to challange homphobia through confusion and distorted guitars!” – Brian Molko

“It was about a mindset. Say what you want, wear what you want, fuck who you want.” – Yungblud

Reflective interviews with the band members reveal their views on the world and Placebo’s place in it, alongside contributions from Shirley Mason [Garbage], Robbie Williams, Yungblud and other musicians.

“We all need heroes to relate to, to aspire to.” – Robbie Williams

There is also archive footage and exclusive material, including material documenting the band’s collaborations and relationship with David Bowie.

“A fabulous band, Placebo!” – David Bowie

The documentary’s narrative is structured around performances of songs from Never Let Me Go filmed at Twickenham Film Studios, which was previously featured in Peter Jackson’s lauded documentary Get Back about The Beatles).

There’s obviously huge demand for this footage as this video of Surrounded by Spies at Twickenham Studios was viewed 75,000 times in its first 24 hours on YouTube.

The Placebo documentary This Search For Meaning is available to buy now.

Placebo documentary – This Is What You Wanted – Live In Mexico City tracklisting

Alongside the documentary on Blu-ray and DVD, another inclusion in the collection is a recording of the band’s concert at Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City in 2023. During that tour, Placebo played to over 1.5 million people. You can re-live the experience through this 23 song set on CD.

1. Opening Titles
2. Forever Chemicals
3. Beautiful James
4. Scene Of The Crime
5. Hugz
6. Happy Birthday In The Sky
7. Bionic
8. Twin Demons
9. Surrounded By Spies
10. Chemtrails
11. Sad White Reggae
12. Try Better Next Time
13. Too Many Friends
14. Went Missing
15. For What It’s Worth
16. Slave to The Wage
17. Song To Say Goodbye
18. Come Undone
19. The Bitter End
20. Infra-Red
21. Shout
22. Fix Yourself
23. Running Up That Hill

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