At this point, I've accepted that Taylor Swift operates on an entirely different creative clock than the rest of us. Of all the behind-the-scenes stories to come out of the 2026 movie schedule, I wasn't prepared for what Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton had to say about how quickly she wrote "I Knew It, I Knew You" after seeing the Pixar sequel. The guy has spent decades making some of animation's most beloved films, but apparently even he couldn't keep his language family-friendly when he heard what she'd done. Here’s his NOT PG reaction after Swift wrote the song in less than a day.
During a recent Q&A with Swift, Stanton recalled how the singer ended up contributing a song to the film. Swift's brother Austin had urged her to watch an early cut while she was exhausted from the Eras Tour, and she finally agreed once she'd recovered. She immediately connected with Jessie, the cowgirl at the center of the sequel, and called Stanton from the screening room that afternoon. Hours later, Disney's music team called him again, this time with news he couldn't quite believe:
You [Swift] saw it that morning with your brother, and that was at 10 o'clock. And then at noon my FaceTime rings, and it's from Tom, but it's you guys, you and Austin, and you're still in your seats and you're gushing about the movie. And you said, ‘You want to do the song?’ Like, there wasn't even a debate about this or a discussion. It was just, ‘You want to do the song?’ We're like, ‘Great, great, great.’ And we almost got off so that you couldn't change your mind.
I love that Stanton's first instinct was to end the call before the “Shake it Off” performer could reconsider. Getting her to agree to write the song was already a pretty big deal, but he had no idea just how quickly things were about to move. He continued:
And then I go home that night, and Tom calls me, the head of music, and says, ‘She wrote the song.’ I'm like, ‘What?’ And I'm like, ‘No, no, no, no. She found it or she had it already. She relabeled it.’ And he's like, ‘No, she's in the studio and she's written the song, and I'm driving right now to hear it.’ I'm like, ‘Wow, get the f out of here.’
I kind of love that his first assumption was that Swift must have quietly pulled an old song off the shelf and given it a Toy Story label. He seemed genuinely baffled that someone could watch a movie in the morning and have a song ready before dinner. Apparently Stanton wasn't the only Toy Story veteran surprised by the music icon's involvement.
Stanton's day somehow got weirder. Around 9 that evening, he got another FaceTime call, this time from Disney CEO Bob Iger, who stood beside Swift and raved about the track. Stanton recalled asking the music A-lister if she'd really written it before calling her "a beast." The director didn't hear the finished song in person until several days later, when he flew to Los Angeles. He added:
I got choked up when I heard it. And the only other time I've heard a song that just dropped from thin air and was perfect was when Randy Newman came in and played 'You've Got a Friend in Me" on a piano with six of us.
That's serious praise, especially coming from someone who helped shape Pixar's original era. Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me" remains one of the most recognizable movie songs of all time, and Swift has said she didn't want her contribution to feel out of place. She wrote and produced "I Knew It, I Knew You" with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff, drawing on her country roots and Jessie's complicated history of being left behind.
While the song came together ridiculously fast, Stanton offered a beautiful explanation: Swift's lifelong connection to Toy Story prepared her for it. The filmmaker said the tune really took "a lifetime" to write, starting with her watching the films as a kid. I think that's a much sweeter explanation than the one he gave on that first phone call.
Toy Story 5 is now streaming with a Disney+ subscription, with the Taylor Swift and Antonoff track playing over the end credits. And if you need a reason to revisit the flick, picture Stanton losing his mind and dropping F-bombs on FaceTime over the song.
