Taylor Swift Reveals How ‘I Knew It’ for Toy Story 5 Was Written in Just One Day

On the very day Disney-Pixar’s highly anticipated Toy Story 5 officially hit theaters, pop superstar Taylor Swift took to X to share an incredible behind-the-scenes look at her creative process. The singer posted a brief video clip of herself speaking directly to the camera on the exact day her brand-new original track, “I Knew It, I Knew You,” was written and recorded.

According to Swift’s own timeline, the primary work for the entire song was completed in a single whirlwind day. The video reveals that she was working under a strict, self-imposed deadline, having scheduled a high-stakes meeting to play the finished track for Disney CEO Bob Iger at 9:00 p.m.—astonishingly, this meeting was set after she had just sat down for an initial screening of the animated sequel at 11:00 a.m. that very morning.

Caught in a Case of ‘Songwriter Zoomies’

Swift attributed her remarkable ability to complete the entire writing process and basic tracking session in eight hours or less to her deep, lifelong love for the Pixar franchise. However, she also joked that she was hit with a sudden, overwhelming wave of creative inspiration, which she playfully described as a textbook case of “the songwriter zoomies.”

“Been kind of a hectic day,” Swift says in the studio footage, casually holding a pair of headphones in front of a massive recording console while her studio engineer cheerfully looks on in the background. “At 11 a.m., I went to 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 6:57 p.m. 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.”

An Eight-Hour Turnaround Under Tight Secrecy

If Swift indeed kept her strict 9:00 p.m. studio appointment, her timeline reveals an incredibly compressed workflow. Given that a standard feature-length screening would have wrapped up around 1:00 p.m., the pop star had to travel back to her home studio, write the lyrics and melody from scratch, build out the production, and lay down her final vocal tracks all within an eight-hour window. This rapid-fire session likely excluded the final commercial mixing and mastering touch-ups that followed, but the core tracking was finished entirely in one block.

While the exact calendar date of this intense session remains unrevealed in the social media clip, stars of the movie shed some light on the timeline during the film’s glamorous New York premiere. Cast members admitted they weren’t officially notified about Swift’s surprise end-credits theme until shortly before the general public was. However, industry insiders suggest this delay had more to do with the tight-lipped security protocols that typically surround any new music from Taylor Swift, rather than the track actually being turned in at the very last second.

Furthermore, her 9:00 p.m. session with Iger was almost certainly a personal challenge Swift set for herself out of sheer artistic confidence. In a previous promotional message, she noted that she had been invited to view Toy Story 5 while it was still “in its early stages,” rather than viewing a final, completed theatrical cut.

Fulfilling a Childhood Dream

For Swift, the opportunity to contribute to the beloved animated universe was the culmination of a lifelong fandom.

“I’ve always dreamed of getting to write for these characters whom I’ve adored since I was a 5-year-old kid watching the first Toy Story movie,” she wrote in her original statement announcing the high-profile track. “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?”