Taylor Swift Joins Toy Story 5 Soundtrack
Taylor Swift wrote a song for Toy Story 5. A country song, no less. It’s about Jessie the cowgirl — the one voiced by Joan Cusack — and it drops this Friday. The pop megastar confirmed Monday she’d recorded “I Knew It, I Knew You” after an early screening, with the film opening June 19. Canadian Swifties were already primed by a cryptic billboard campaign that slapped an ambiguous “TS” in classic Toy Story lettering across Toronto, Los Angeles, London, and Mexico City. In Toronto, where Swift’s Eras Tour packed stadiums last year, those posters had people speculating for days.
Swift co-wrote and produced the track with Jack Antonoff, purposefully returning to the country sound of her earliest records. She’s been attached to Jessie since childhood, and the character has been a reliable tearjerker since Toy Story 2. After the screening, Swift went home and wrote the song immediately. “I fell instantly in love with Toy Story 5,” she posted. “I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening. Sometimes you just know, right?” Director Andrew Stanton said her connection to Jessie was so immediate that the song “instantly felt like it had always belonged there.”
This is a smart pairing. Pixar gets a ready-made streaming army. Swift reaffirms her cross-generational reach, the kind that made her Toronto Eras Tour shows an estimated $100-million economic event. It’s not a question of whether the single will top charts — it will.
How the announcement spread
The news landed Monday afternoon, just as a long weekend was winding down. “Taylor Swift Toy Story” was trending nationally on X, TikTok, and Instagram in hours. Those billboards, cleverly blurring the line between “TS” for Taylor and “TS” for Toy Story, had built the buzz. Swift’s website ran a countdown clock, and when it hit zero, the pre-order page appeared.
Physical CD singles are available now in three versions: the original, an acoustic take, and a piano take. They appear to ship to Canada, though exact local pricing wasn’t clear on Tuesday. (A $5.99 USD single could land around $8.25 CAD before any retailer markup.) The multi-format strategy is a familiar one, and industry observers will be watching to see if the track can notch another number-one debut on the Canadian Hot 100.
Soundtrack comparisons
Plenty of stars have crossed into animation. Justin Timberlake, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Elton John, Pharrell: they’ve all scored massive hits. But Swift’s commercial momentum is in a different weight class. Original soundtrack appetite has been rebounding, and her arrival feels like it could tip things further. Canadian artists like Alessia Cara have contributed to animated films, but nobody brings this kind of firepower.
Swift’s last album, *The Life of a Showgirl*, came out in October and broke Canadian streaming records. A music video for “Elizabeth Taylor” stitched from archival clips, followed in April. So “I Knew It, I Knew You” is the first wholly new music in months. The film’s trailer shows Buzz and Woody contending with a tablet named Lilypad — a screen-time anxiety plot that’ll ring true in a lot of households. The single arrives June 5. As of Tuesday, Cineplex had yet to post showtimes for the June 19 release, and advance tickets weren’t on sale. Fans could only pre-order the CD and wait.