I’d been reading raves for days about the seven-minute musical cold open for this Questlove-helmed documentary, so when it popped up in my Peacock “For You” list Saturday night, I figured I’d catch the intro before jumping into another episode of Columbo or Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Two hours later, as the credits rolled over the rousing finale of Hey Jude intercut with a synced montage of musical acts, I wondered not whether Ladies & Gentlemen… would win an Emmy, but rather how many.

First, that much-ballyhooed opening sequence: It will certainly go down as perhaps the greatest musical mashup ever created for a documentary. Questlove’s decades of DJing is on full aural display as he overlays and intertwines dozens of performances, all perfectly beat-matched, weaving sonic stories from juxtaposed two-second clips.

The musical collage offered several moments of jaw-dropping awe: the divine inspiration of blending Bobby McFerrin’s Drive with Busta Rhymes’ Tear Da Roof Off and TLC’s Creep. The fulfilled expectations—as soon as Queen’s Under Pressure came on, you knew Vanilla Ice’s legally distinct™ Ice Ice Baby would soon follow. And sheer delight that can’t be logically explained—I got all verklempt when Cher’s I Found Someone segued seamlessly into Hanson’s MMMBop.

These moments carried through to the end as Questlove masterfully interwove Taylor Swift, Billy Preston, Ed Sheeran, Backstreet Boys, Salt ’N’ Pepa, Simon & Garfunkel, Spice Girls, and Tina Turner into one triumphant all skate. Only Questlove—with his deep musical knowledge, ambition to create, and attention to detail—could pull off this audacious act.

In a New York Times interview, Questlove explains how this sequence came to be:

It’s impossible for me to phone anything in, even if I wanted to. I just wanted to throw the ultimate D.J. gig and hook you in from the gate. It started off small, and it couldn’t stop.

In the beginning, I was just going in five-year intervals — what’s the three strongest moments between ’75 and ’80? — and do it that way. But I’m so programmed as a D.J. it’s physically impossible for me to gather a group of songs together and not start — that’s my version of improvisation. And once you put, like, 17 songs together, you have a conversation with yourself: “OK, are we really doing this?”

The documentary probably claims its Emmys on the strength of these seven minutes alone.

But the rest of the two-hour show makes an even stronger argument, as it explores the remarkable impact SNL musical performances have had on our culture: The first rap artists on television; performers from Adele to Frank Zappa; Dick in a Box. SNL has both shaped and reflected the music we listen to in ways that I’d forgotten—or perhaps taken for granted—until watching this documentary. Just the sheer scope of genres represented is overwhelming. Or, to quote Jem Aswad’s MSN review:

In terms of its musical guests, “SNL” has no real parallel in American television history.

Out of the hundreds of performers that were showcased, there may have been three or four I’d never heard of before. (The group Fear was among them, but gosh, I loved that segment!) That is a remarkable achievement for a show that’s best known for comedy. Yet I’ll admit, when I watched SNL more regularly, it was often driven by the musical guest even more than it was by the host. I’m guessing that’s true for a sizable portion of its audience.

The film goes well beyond a simple retrospective of musical guests. It tells stories of classic sketches that almost never aired, and spotlights the many parodies, music-driven sketches, and controversies from the show’s 50-year history, and contextualizes them—in some cases with backstage footage, which proved particularly revealing and, as a TV nerd, especially rewarding.

Questlove has achieved legendary status in the music industry and is already a multi-award-winning documentarian. His latest foray into the genre cements his place as one of our top musical filmmakers.

If the goals of a documentary are to educate, entertain, illuminate, and inspire, Ladies & Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music hit the superfecta.