The new big thing on country radio is an old big thing: Taylor Swift. The global superstar released a new song called “I Knew It, I Knew You” on June 5th as part of the Toy Story 5 soundtrack, with the metadata and marketing claiming it’s a country song. In the film, it’s sung by cowgirl character Jessie. Now the song is cresting the Billboard Hot 100, and setting records on country radio for its meteoric rise.
Last week, Swift and “I Knew It, I Knew You” made headlines by debuting at #8 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart—the first time a single from a woman has debuted in the Top 10 on that chart since it was first published in 1990, and only the second single to ever do so behind “More Than A Memory” from Garth Brooks that debuted at #1 in 2007.
The adoption of the song by country radio has been massive, even historic, necessitating a mea culpa from Saving Country Music, which said initially,
“They might try to service ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ to country radio as a single. They tried that with ‘Betty’ from Folklore, but the best it could do is #32. Then the murder ballad ‘No Body, No Crime‘ from Evermore stalled at #54. It’s hard to see ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ doing any better, or competing for CMA/ACM/Grammy country awards.”
Boy was that an mis-under-estimate. The single has not only blown past all of Swift’s previous post-country benchmarks, it now is almost guaranteed CMA/ACM/Grammy consideration, if only because these awards will likely want to entice the superstar into a televised performance.
It’s important to point out that country radio actually has two major charts, and there’s currently a major discrepancy between the two via “I Knew It, I Knew You.” Though Billboard’s Luminate radio panel put the song in the Top 10 its first week, Mediabase had it debuting at #25, and this week still only has it at #17. These are still massive numbers for Swift out of the chute, but that discrepancy is quite significant.
Saving Country Music might have not underestimated the resonance of “I Knew It, I Knew You” as much as the appetite by Swift, Disney, and everyone else involved to push it to country radio as a way to advertise the Toy Story franchise. Really, this feels just as much a lesson of how country radio will adopt most anything they’re told to as opposed to truly having a finger on the pulse of the American country music consumer and serving them what they want. It’s not that America doesn’t want “I Knew It, I Knew You.” But it’s fair to ask how many of those listeners are country fans, and just how “country” the song is.
That doesn’t mean Taylor Swift and “I Knew It, I Knew You” isn’t having major implications on country music. The song has broken Ella Langley’s most recent streak at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with “Choosin’ Texas,” which comes in at #2 this week thanks to Swift. Incidentally, Ella Langley’s “Be Her” that’s also been on a big winning streak sits at #4 on the Hot 100, but #1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart where it’s been for weeks.
Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” is set to depose Langley on radio soon, sitting at #4 this week at Billboard Airplay. Langley is also enjoying another rare feat where she has three songs simultaneously in the Billboard Country Airplay Top 5: “Choosin’ Texas,” “Be Her,” and her duet with Morgan Wallen, “I Can’t Love You Anymore.” For the record, on the Mediabase charts, “Choosin’ Texas” has already been labeled as “recurrent,” meaning it’s not charting at the top anymore, even though it’s receiving plenty of radio play.
Could Taylor Swift and “I Knew It, I Knew You” disrupt the Ella Langley moment? In some respects it already has. But Langley is also disrupting Langley, with “Choosin’ Texas” keeping “Be Her” from hitting #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and Langley has proven her resonance is deep enough that it doesn’t matter who else is nipping at her heels, or deposing her from the top spot for a few weeks. Langley’s new album Dandelion is still at #2 this week behind Drake.
Also, Taylor Swift singles have a pretty notorious track record of burning bright, and then fading away quickly. She’ll go through an entire album’s worth of #1 singles in a matter of months, while a song like “Choosin’ Texas” stays at the top for what feels like an eternity. It’s possible “I Knew It, I Knew You” suffers a similar fate.
After all, it still just doesn’t feel like “I Knew It, I Knew You” is that resonant of a track. Name recognition and Stan support might be most of what is propping the song up. Elements of its melody are reminiscent of “Even The Nights Are Better” from Air Supply (and not in a good way), and the song just lacks the “twang” that is so present in today’s country.
But clearly the lesson from the first few weeks of “I Knew It, I Knew You” is to not underestimate it. This is not some 3rd or 4th single from a Swift record they’re “testing” at country radio. It’s an all out blitz. But the song’s success might say more about the country radio format’s permissiveness than it does the resonance or long-term impact the song will have on country radio, or country music.
Will Taylor Swift use the wild success of “I Knew It, I Knew You” to springboard back into country now that Ella Langley has shattered all glass ceilings and country remains the hot new thing? We’ll have to see. But again, the rather wild, unexpected adoption and success of a song from a movie soundtrack is resetting the possibilities of women in country music, and all of a sudden injecting Taylor Swift as a player in country once again, for better or worse. Whether it’s better or worse, we’ll just have to wait and see.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source savingcountrymusic.com ’
