Taylor Swift showed up unannounced to the Toy Story 5 world premiere Tuesday night at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles — and left the audience with two performances and a declaration that the film is a masterpiece.
Swift took to the stage after the screening and played the piano while performing “I Knew It, I Knew You,” her original song for the Toy Story 5 soundtrack, live for the first time. She then joined Randy Newman for a duet of his beloved franchise anthem “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” The crowd, which included the film’s full voice cast, responded with what eyewitnesses described as an emotional standing ovation.
Addressing the audience, Swift called the film “insanely beautiful” and a “masterpiece,” adding, “It means the world to me to be a small part of the universe of these films.” She skipped the traditional red carpet step-and-repeat but joined the cast for a group photograph and, in a moment that went instantly viral, asked Tom Hanks to sign her personal Toy Story VHS tape.
The song itself carries more weight than a typical studio tie-in. The Guardian described “I Knew It, I Knew You” as functioning as an answer song to Randy Newman’s “When She Loved Me,” the emotional centerpiece of Toy Story 2 — where Newman explored abandonment’s ache, Swift’s track responds with gentle elation as Jessie recognizes her former owner. Director Andrew Stanton, who conceived the film with Jessie at its center, called Swift’s connection to the character immediate and undeniable from the first listen.
Swift wrote about the experience on social media when the song dropped June 4, sharing a childhood home video of herself as a little girl marching in a red cowgirl hat. She described writing the track as “a musical departure and coming home at the same time,” and said she and Antonoff “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 track made history at country radio this week, becoming the first song by a female artist to receive playlist pickups from every Mediabase-monitored country station in its debut week. Toy Story 5 opens June 19.
