Jessie and her owner are reunited, in the apparent scenario laid out in Taylor Swift‘s new “Toy Story 5” song, “I Knew It, I Knew You,” which debuted on digital services Thursday night.
Also reunited (and it feels so good): Taylor Swift and country music — as promised by Disney when they first helped Swift announce the new tune Monday.
Swift posted a message on social media as the single was coming out that included vintage home video of herself as a little girl, marching in a red cowgirl hat and and a shirt embroidered with boots. She wrote:
“Writing this song felt like a musical departure and coming home at the same time. Creating something for Jessie was a new challenge and also felt like second nature all at once. And being a @toystory kid from the age of 5 til now… is an adventure I plan to be on, to infinity and beyond.”
She continued, “Thank you to the brilliant Andrew Stanton for imagining me for this, all those years ago when you wrote this newest film. Thank you to the incomparable @randynewmanofficial for the gorgeous sonic tapestry of songs and scores you’ve meticulously woven over the years. You created the Toy Story musical world, and we are lucky to get to live in it. By we, I mean myself and my pal @jackantonoff. We wrote this with so much adoration for these characters that made us laugh and helped us learn lessons and think outside the backyard all throughout our childhoods.”
The song is sprightly and upbeat. It seems likely to serve a similar function in “Toy Story 5” as another tune, “When She Loved Me,” served all the way back in “Toy Story 2,” as far as an anthem destined to play over a montage involving Jessie. But whereas that was a mournful song of separation between human and cowgirl toy, “I Knew It, I Knew You” has the opposite tone, finding easygoing joy in a rematch that was made to be.
And yes, it has one of Swift’s patented bridges, in case anyone was worried she would go the way of TikTok economy and leave that out.
The track is co-produced and co-written by Swift and Jack Antonoff, who is making his return to that chair for the first time since “The Tortured Poets Department.” Although Antonoff didn’t start working with her until she had largely set her original genre aside, they did work together on the country-leaning song “Betty” from her 2020 “Folklore” album (also co-produced by Aaron Dessner), so this is not entirely unfamiliar territory for them as collaborators.
The lyrics have a much more certain outcome for the reappearance of a loved one on a porch than the tentative ones of “Betty” did:
I knew you
Through the daze of the blades of the grass in summer
Parachutes for the free fall of being younger
I memorized the sound of your bare footsteps
Running wild, it’s been a long time
Life has ways of leaving those days behind
But seeing you tonight
I remembered I loved you
Came back when it mattered
I saw you, standing there in the light of the window
Wearing that same smile
Man, it’s been a while
But I knew it, I knеw you
I knew it, I knew you
I knew you, all your bluеs like a mood ring changing colors
You did too, there were times we could fight like brothers
I watched you drive around the bend
For what I thought would be the last time I saw my friend
But love has ways of bringing things back to life
All you said was, “hi”
And I remembered I loved you
Came back when it mattered
I saw you, standing there in the light of the window
Wearing that same smile
Man, it’s been a while
But I knew it, I knew you (I knew, I knew)
Along with the digital single, Swift has been selling both CD and vinyl versions of the track on her website this week, although all of those physical editions sold out well before their 48-hour windows were up.
Although it’s easy to picture how the song may be used in the film, based on descriptions of the plot that have already been offered to some journalists, based on sneak previews of the first half-hour of the movie, the usage of the track will become clearer when the movie has its gala premiere June 9. It opens in theaters the night of June 18.
