As we gaze upon lovingly shot close-ups of the Tennessee River, we hear a familiar voice intoning empty platitudes. "'Magic,'" the voice says, "is the word that comes to mind when I think of Muscle Shoals. It's about alchemy, it's about turning metal... into gold." Is that an Irish accent we're detecting? Oh, jesus chri—is that fucking Bono? Sure enough, we cut to a stumpy Irishman wearing a pair of bling-bling eyeglasses. Instead of any of the dozens of incredible musicians who recorded there, the filmmakers chose Bono—who had nothing to do with the legendary music that was cut at FAME Studios or the neighboring, competing Muscle Shoals Sound Studio—to introduce their movie about the small Alabama town that originated some truly magnificent music in the 1960s and 1970s. Bono isn't in much of Muscle Shoals, but that he's in it at all is a symptom of the movie's wrong-headedness. by Ned Lannamann