Taylor Swift wrote, produced, and recorded her Toy Story 5 end-credits song in roughly eight hours flat — and the result has now made her the only artist in chart history to send two different singles into the top 10 of Billboard’s Radio Songs chart on debut. The story behind “I Knew It, I Knew You” is, by any measure, one of the more remarkable creative sprints of Swift’s career.
Swift posted a video to social media on the day Toy Story 5 hit theatres, filming herself in a studio holding a pair of headphones as an engineer worked nearby. Her account of the day reads like something out of a fever dream of productivity. “Been kind of a hectic day,” she told the camera. “At 11am, went to go see Toy Story 5, got so inspired, got the songwriter zoomies, went home, wrote the end credit song for Toy Story 5. We have now produced it, and I’m doing vocals. It’s 6:57pm. In two hours, Bob Iger and Tom from Pixar are coming to hear it. We have not recorded it yet. And I think this is one of the most fun days of my life.”
The maths is staggering. If her screening ended around 1pm and her meeting with Disney CEO Bob Iger was set for 9pm, Swift wrote, produced, and recorded the song’s primary vocals within roughly an eight-hour window — not accounting for mixing and polish that would have followed afterward. She had previously revealed she saw the film in its early stages rather than the finished cut, writing in her original announcement: “I’ve always dreamed of getting to write for these characters who I’ve adored since I was a 5 year old kid watching the first Toy Story movie. I fell instantly in love with Toy Story 5 when I was lucky enough to see it in its early stages, and I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening. Sometimes you just know, right?”
Stars of the film have said they were not officially told about Swift’s involvement until shortly before the public learned — though that secrecy likely reflects the standard confidentiality surrounding any new Swift release rather than the song genuinely coming together at the last possible second.
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A Chart Feat No Other Artist Has Matched
The speed of the song’s creation turned out to be matched by the speed of its commercial impact. “I Knew It, I Knew You” debuted at number seven on Billboard’s Radio Songs chart — the industry’s primary measure of total audience impressions across all US radio formats. That single placement made Swift the first and only artist in chart history to land two different songs inside the Radio Songs top 10 on debut.
Her first such entry came in October 2025, when “The Fate of Ophelia,” the lead single from The Life of a Showgirl, debuted in that same number seven position. No other artist has managed the feat even once before Swift did it twice. Only a handful of songs in the chart’s history have ever opened inside the top 10 at all — Janet Jackson’s “All for You” at number nine in 2001, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” at number six a decade later, Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up” at number six, and Adele’s “Easy on Me” at number four, which still holds the record for the highest debut in the chart’s history.
The song’s overall performance was just as striking. “I Knew It, I Knew You” debuted across 13 separate Billboard rankings, including five radio-focused charts. Beyond its number seven debut on Radio Songs, it opened at number eight on Country Airplay, number nine on Adult Contemporary, number 13 on Adult Pop Airplay, and number 20 on Pop Airplay.
Across her career, Swift has sent 55 different tracks onto the Radio Songs chart, with 24 of them — nearly half — reaching the top 10. Eight have gone all the way to number one. Given how close “I Knew It, I Knew You” already sits to the summit, a push toward the top spot in the coming weeks would not be a surprise.
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