The countdown is over, although there is surely further suspense to come. Following the ticking down of a countdown clock, Taylor Swift revealed news that fans have been waiting for — an original song in “Toy Story 5, titled “I Knew It, I Knew You,” coming out this Friday. And it’s being touted by Disney as “a return to country” for the crossover superstar, tied in with the franchise’s toy cowgirl character, Jessie.
The track is co-written and co-produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, making his return to working with the star after last appearing on her “The Tortured Poets Department” album.
The song is available as a CD single through her webstore, with additional “acoustic” and “piano” versions available in addition to the studio rendition. The CDs are on sale there through Wednesday afternoon, as limited editions, and will ship June 19, the date the movie hits theaters.
The digital countdown to this news took place everywhere from Swift’s webstore to a billboard in Times Square, as June 1 truly became New Year’s Eve for Swifties.
“It’s a Toy Story,” Swift wrote in a message to fans, alongside an emoji of a smiling face with a cowboy hat, another tipoff that the song is innately connected to the film’s cowgirl character, Jessie. “You knew it! My new original song ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ for Disney and @Pixar’s @toystory 5 will be yours on June 5th. I’ve always dreamed of getting to write for these characters who I’ve adored since I was a 5 year old kid watching the first Toy Story. I fell instantly in love with Toy Story 5 when I was lucky enough to see it in its early stages, and I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening. Sometimes you just know, right?”
Disney’s press release about the song went where Swift herself did not, in pegging a genre for it: “Inspired by the rootin’ tootin’ cowgirl Jessie’s ongoing journey in ‘Toy Story 5’ that began back in ‘Toy Story 2,’ ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ also marks a return to Taylor Swift’s country roots, blending styles that have defined her record-breaking career as a songwriter and artist.”
Said writer-director Andrew Stanton in a statement, “It’s incredible just how meaningful it’s been having Taylor write and perform this song. Her connection to Jessie and the immediate way she understood what the character was going through was undeniable. The song is so deeply connected to ‘Toy Story.’ So much so that on first listen, it instantly felt like it had always belonged there, like a long-lost family member. It was kismet.”
The film comes out June 19, and the gala premiere is next week, which may tell the tale of whether this song is Swift’s sole contribution to the film.
Why was today the day to announce Swift news in regard to the film, since nothing is random in her world? Well, for one thing, June 1 is National Cloud Database Day, as Swifties noticed — not a huge day on the national calendar making it an ideal date for news from a woman who has clearly been looking at clouds from 13 sides now.
The hints that Swift was participating in “Toy Story 5” in some way began in April, but really got unsubtle Friday when billboards went up around the country with the acronym “TS” surrounded by 13 cartoon clouds, representing her oft-used lucky number. Disney’s social media accounts did some further rib-nudging over the weekend with tweets paraphrasing Swift lyrics as captions for the billboard images, some of which featured the character Jessie.
Countdown clock on Taylor Swift’s webstore ticking down to ‘Toy Story 5’ reveal
store.taylorswift.com
The “TS5” filmmakers had been doing some teasing themselves. In a video interview published last week prior to the billboard campaign, they were cagey when asked about rumors Swift had done a song for the film. The chatter “surprised us. We’d be frickin’ honored,” director Andrew Stanton said. Then he clarified: “The sad truth is, we watched the movie being mixed last week, done, and the song on the end of that was not Taylor Swift’s song.” That immediately set up anticipation that Swift had a song elsewhere in the film that he was dancing around.
When the countdown clock appeared on Swift’s website Monday morning, it featured a graphic of a ranch house in the country, and Jessie dancing on top of a barn, with a “TS” advertisement on a hillside bringing some billboard blight to the tranquil rural setting. This is not just a random setting for the promotional material — it’s Jessie’s old house, and it’s a key setting in the film.
Variety recently reported on a screening of the first 30 minutes of the movie, saying that the fifth film “places her (Jessie) front and center. …. In the film, Jessie finds herself returning to her former home. Except, Emily doesn’t live there anymore. There’s a new family in the house, and the person living in the house is a young girl named Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris). … Jessie’s storyline promises to be an emotional one as she is forced to reckon with some memories of the house, Emily and issues of abandonment.”
The teases from the Swift camp grew more elaborate as fans noticed that her official online lyrics had been altered so that the letters “T” and “S” were capitalized throughout the words of the fifth song on each one of her albums.
Fans further noted that the release date for “Toy Story 5,” June 19, coincides with the anniversary date for Swift’s first single release, “Tim McGraw.” And the singer has said that she has a “Taylor’s Version” edition of her debut album in the can that she planned to still release someday. So some theories had those being tied in somehow, but just how was a deep mystery… unless Jessie had a deep love for the self-titled 2006 album often referred to in Swiftie circles as just “Debut.”
There was no evidence in Monday’s announcement that any such tie-in is forthcoming, but, clearly, yet is much to be revealed.
For chartwatchers, ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’ will have two weeks to impact the charts as a strictly streaming release, starting this Friday, before the song will get a big boost in week 3 from sales of the CD singles that are on sale now but won’t ship till June 19.
Jessie has a history of inspiring important music in the “Toy Story” franchise. The film in which she was introduced, “Toy Story 2,” featured one of the most moving segments in any of the films as Sarah McLachlan sang “When She Loved Me,” which resulted in an Oscar nomination for songwriter Randy Newman.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com ’
