After a seemingly premature countdown clock, a carefully worded denial from director Andrew Stanton, and a vague billboard with a very specific number of clouds, Taylor Swift‘s involvement in Toy Story 5 is officially confirmed.
The news came after a countdown clock appeared on the pop star’s official site, which featured Jessie dancing on a rooftop and the “TS” billboard that had appeared last week — complete with 13 clouds, an important sum in Swiftie numerology.
If you’re asking yourself, “Wait, wasn’t there already a Toy Story-themed countdown featured on Taylor Swift’s official site,” don’t worry. You haven’t lost your marbles. A previous iteration of the clock appeared last month, but was quickly pulled down, suggesting that it may have been pushed live prematurely.
When the countdown clock hit zero this time, the shop page updated with three versions of a new original song called “I Knew It, I Knew You.” The track will be available to purchase as a CD in three editions: regular, acoustic, and piano. The art attached to the releases hints at a further connection to Jessie and the cowgirl’s tragic backstory, as seen in Toy Story 2.
While the track wasn’t immediately available at the time of its announcement, Disney confirmed that “I Knew It, I Knew You” will debut on June 5.
The news was seemingly in direct contradiction to what director Andrew Stanton said during an interview last week, which spurred headlines suggesting Swift was not involved. But a closer look at the filmmaker’s quote left some wiggle room. “The sad truth is we watched the movie being mixed last week done and the song at the end of that was not Taylor Swift song,” Stanton said, which only really means that a potential song from Swift wouldn’t be the end-credits song. It could still appear mid-movie.
Swift has a history of providing original tracks for films, going all the way back to Valentine’s Day in 2010 with “Today Was a Fairytale.” For The Hunger Games in 2012, she recorded “Eyes Open” and “Safe & Sound,” the latter of which earned her a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media. In 2017, she and Zayn made “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” for Fifty Shades Darker. Her most recent contribution was “Carolina” from Where the Crawdads Sing in 2022.
Despite all of those tracks, Swift has never been nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars — the closest she got was “Carolina” making the shortlist. That could now change with a track in a Toy Story film. The series has earned three nominations in the category and won in 2011 for Toy Story 3‘s “We Belong Together” by Randy Newman.
