LOS ANGELES, Nov. 13 (UPI) — Taylor Swift said her song from Toy Story 5, “I Knew It, I Knew You,” reflected maturity she’s come to in her own life. The song plays at the end of the film and is on the soundtrack.
In Toy Story 5, Jessie the cowgirl (voice of Joan Cusack) visits the home where her former owner, Emily, grew up. A new family, with a young daughter Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), lives there now.
In a recent Zoom press conference with the Critics Choice Association, Swift, 36, described her process of writing the song with Jack Antonoff. She responded to the way the film gave Jessie closure over her heartbreak from 1999’s Toy Story 2.
“I was so struck by the lessons that Jessie learned,” Swift said. “I think that resonated with me because they were lessons I learned in my life. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to write this song until I was in my 30s. It takes a long time to process and perceive memory with acceptance.”
Without spoiling Jessie’s discovery for viewers yet to watch the latest film, which is now on home video, she finds clues to Emily’s life without her.
“This specific type of gratitude that this song is about, it just feels like it’s something I’ve arrived at more recently in my life,” Swift said. “I don’t think I was ready to write about it in this type of way until I saw Jessie experience it.”
In Toy Story 2, Woody the cowboy (Tom Hanks) met Jessie when he discovered he was part of a collectible Woody’s Roundup set. Jessie told him the story of Emily outgrowing her and donating her to charity.
Jessie has remained a part of Woody’s gang through the Toy Story sequels. Only in Toy Story 5 does she find some evidence that Emily did not just forget about her toy. Swift could relate.
“There’s a weight lifted because you realize you don’t have to carry that particular thing around anymore,” she said. “It took me a while to realize how to release certain things from the load you drag around. I happened to see the movie at the perfect time to write this.”
As much as she related to Jessie, Swift also felt relief writing a song in her character. Many of Swift’s own songs are autobiographical.
“In another way there is a pressure release valve of not having to write about my personal life,” Swift said. “Being able to absorb myself in a story that I wasn’t just watching unfold when I watched Toy Story 5, I’ve been watching this story unfold since I was 5.”
The original Toy Story came out in November 1995. Toy Story 2 was 1999. Sarah McLachlan sang “When She Loved Me” about Jessie remembering Emily’s childhood, and longing for the days when she loved her.
“That song is so perfect and devastating that there are times that I will just think about it and feel like I’m gonna cry,” Swift said. “I don’t even need to hear it to feel that way. It’s so potent and it’s so powerful. It’s really sorrow and heartbreak and grief in its purest form.”
Swift’s song was able to offer healing to Jessie, and viewers who have remained devastated by Toy Story 2 since the last century. Jessie cannot go back to being Emily’s toy, but she learns she made a positive impact on Emily’s adult life.
“You can be there for someone for a time in their lives and make an impact and that can be enough to really mean something,” Swift said. “I wanted to hint at ‘When She Loved Me’ and then heal it.”
Randy Newman has been the composer and songwriter for the entire Toy Story franchise. His original song “You’ve Got a Friend In Me” has been the theme for the whole series.
So Swift and Antonoff wanted to honor Newman and compose a song that fit with his franchise aesthetics. Swift described how that stretched her musically with chord progressions she would not typically write for herself.
“It’s on that line of ‘Life has ways of leaving those days behind,’ I would have gone for an A minor,” Swift said. “Instead we go to an A7 and then resolve in a D minor. It almost feels like you’re about to modulate but you don’t.”
Swift also incorporated instruments she would not normally orchestrate, such a virginal harpsichord.
“We’ve got tenor sax, we’ve got baritone sax and they’re playing in a way that is structured in a different way than we would normally do it,” Swift said. “We would normally have very structured parts. Whereas in our world of trying to reach towards Randy Newman, we felt it could feel more like a jam band with individual players acting as characters.”
Swift did want “I Knew It, I Knew You” to sound like country music, to go with Jessie.
“I think that her time on Woody’s Roundup and her being a cowgirl, I know how to bring that in,” Swift said. “We’ve got banjo, we’ve got mandolin, harmonica.”
The musical arrangement came after the lyrics, Swift said. Lyrically, Swift said she wanted the words to have a double meaning, allegorically and literally. She explained the opening line as an example, “I knew you through the daze of the blades of the grass in summer.”
“As an allegory, it’s youth,” she said. “It’s the people who knew you when you didn’t wear shoes very often. You were always outside, you were always covered in dirt, you were always sunburnt. That’s a very specific version of you for someone to know.”
Literally, the line describes the point of view of toys.
“When they’re standing on the ground looking up at their kid, they’re looking through the blades of grass because they’re toys,” she said
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