Taylor Swift knew that she wanted to write a song for Toy Story 5 as soon as she saw the film, but not if it meant stepping on anyone else’s cowboy boots.
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The pop superstar sat for a Q&A on Sunday (Nov. 1) alongside director Andrew Stanton after a special screening of the animated movie, where she opened up about penning “I Knew It, I Knew You” — which went on to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — for the end credits. When her involvement was first announced in June, fans were excited; however, there was also some confusion as to why she’d gotten the gig instead of Randy Newman, who’d written the original music for the Toy Story franchise since it began in 1995.
But in the Q&A, Stanton explained that he’d known he wanted to switch things up from the very beginning of making Toy Story 5, and that Swift was the only person he ever had in mind to follow in Newman’s footsteps. “Nothing else made sense,” he shared with the crowd.
When Swift was initially unavailable for discussions about the movie due to her mammoth Eras Tour, Stanton declined to reach out to any other artists about writing the song, deciding that there simply wouldn’t be an original end credits track — something that even Swift didn’t believe when she later had the bandwidth to sign on to the film. “I was repeatedly asking, ‘I know that it took me a couple months to come back to this project. Be honest: Did you guys replace me?’” she recalled at the Q&A.
“‘I don’t want to kick somebody off of this project that you reached out to after [me],’” she added. “‘I understand, but I’m not in the business of doing that.’”
Though there was some delay in her agreeing to write what would become “I Knew It, I Knew You” for the fifth Toy Story, the track famously came together in just a matter of hours. As Swift previously revealed, she saw an early screening and then immediately headed to the studio with Jack Antonoff, finishing the song — which she’d go on to perform with Newman at the film’s Hollywood premiere — before the day was over.
“I got choked up when I heard it,” Stanton recalled of listening to “I Knew It, I Knew You” for the first time a few days after Swift finished it. “The only other time I’ve heard a song that just dropped from thin air and was perfect was when Randy Newman came in and played ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ on piano.”
Fast forward to present day, and “I Knew It, I Knew You” has garnered significant Oscar buzz for best original song at next year’s awards. So far, the 14-time Grammy winner’s campaign for a nomination has included special performances at the Academy Museum Gala in mid-October and at a Grammys Icon Session in August.
Elsewhere in the new Q&A, Swift described how her brother, Austin Swift, was the first to bring Toy Story 5 to her attention and explained how watching the film reminded her of her friendship with longtime BFF Abigail Anderson. “My brother does all my music synchs,” Swift said. “Sometimes we talk like siblings, and then sometimes we have business conversations that are like half sibling, half business. He calls me up and he’s like, ‘I really think you need to see the new Toy Story 5. You’re gonna love it.’”
“I was like, ‘Why?’ He’s like, ‘I signed an NDA, Taylor. I can’t tell you why, which is when we flip into sibling [mode],’” she continued, recalling how she sarcastically poked fun at him over the phone. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, you can’t tell me why? You signed an NDA?’”
She added that the film’s characters Bonnie and Blaze sealed the deal for her in terms of relating to Toy Story 5. “When I moved to Nashville when I was 14, you know, you’re the new kid in school and you’re like, ‘Who should I be friends with?’” Swift told the audience. “There was one girl named Abigail — and she even has curly hair, too, like Blaze — and the two of us, all we wanted to do was talk in Napoleon Dynamite voices. We still do this, and it’s something our husbands have to put up with … when you find that person who just completely sees you for the strange, little genre that is you at your purest, that hit me so hard watching the film.”
