Key Points
Taylor Swift surprised the Toy Story 5 premiere audience with an appearance by Randy Newman.
The pair then performed Toy Story signature song “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.”
Swift praised 82-year-old Newman as “the king of making us feel the absolute most.”
New Toy Story soundtrack star Taylor Swift definitely has a friend in the film series’ signature songsmith, Randy Newman.
During Tuesday night’s Toy Story 5 premiere in Los Angeles, Swift surprised attendees by taking the stage for an emotional rendition of the Disney-Pixar franchise’s theme song accompanied by 82-year-old Newman in a rare, one-off public performance.
“I’m lucky enough to be here because of someone else, who is the architect of the Toy Story musical universe,” Swift said on stage at the event, referencing Newman’s numerous contributions to the film series — including Toy Story 3‘s “We Belong Together” track, for which he won an Academy Award.
“He’s the king of making us feel the absolute most and pulling at our heart strings and making us laugh — and making us like he’s one of our friends, you know what I mean?” Swift asked the audience. “I’m talking about Randy Newman!”
The audience applauded, before Swift approached Newman and asked, “You feel like playing a song? You’re all set up to do it!”
Newman then joined the 36-year-old pop icon for a performance of “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” which he sang alongside her while seated at a piano on stage.
When Swift, who wrote new soundtrack song “I Knew It, I Knew You” for Toy Story 5, which she also performed at the premiere, got to a specific part of the original theme’s lyrics, Newman ad-libbed a playful response to her in the moment.
“Some folks might be a little bit smarter than I am,” Swift sang, while Newman replied, “No one’s smarter than you!”
Newman is one of the most accomplished soundtrack songwriters in movie history, with 22 total Oscar nominations to his credit.
Of those nominations, he’s won two statuettes — one for the aforementioned Toy Story 3, and another for another Pixar production, Monsters, Inc., for which he wrote the song “If I Didn’t Have You.”
Though “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” has undoubtedly become the song of the franchise, it actually didn’t win the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1996. That distinction went to other songwriting legends Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, who triumphed that year for Disney’s Pocahontas song “Colors of the Wind.”
Swift’s Toy Story contribution dropped ahead of the sequel’s release as the latest collaboration between the songwriter and her longtime musical partner Jack Antonoff, with whom she’s crafted some of her biggest hits in recent years.
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Watch Swift and Newman perform “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” at the Toy Story 5 premiere in EW’s video above. The film is in theaters June 19.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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