The Toy Story 5 soundtrack gave Pixar its first primary single. Taylor Swift’s I Knew It, I Knew You, written and produced with Jack Antonoff, debuted on the high of the Billboard Sizzling 100 in June and have become her fifteenth chart-topper there. It additionally went to No. 1 within the UK, her seventh No. 1 single, in line with the Official Charts Firm.
It sits on the entrance of an album that’s in any other case Randy Newman’s, again to attain the toys once more now that the movie is on Disney+. Swift has mentioned she completed the music in about eight hours, as Billboard reported. She wrote it after seeing an early screening of the movie in February 2026.
It’s sung from Jessie’s perspective and performs over the closing credit. Many listeners hear it as a reply to When She Beloved Me, the Sarah McLachlan music from Toy Story 2 about Jessie being given away. Neon’s piece on what I Knew It, I Knew You means argues that it’s much less a reunion music than one in regards to the concern of being left behind.
Toy Story 5 opened in cinemas on 19 June 2026 and reached Disney+ on 23 September. Andrew Stanton directs, with Kenna Harris as co-director. Bonnie is given a pill referred to as Lilypad, voiced by Greta Lee, and stops taking part in along with her toys, which leaves Jessie (Joan Cusack) to guide the response alongside Tom Hanks’s Woody and Tim Allen’s Buzz. It was the highest movie on Disney+ worldwide on FlixPatrol’s chart for 8 October.
That target Jessie is why the music issues greater than typical right here. Newman’s rating fills the remainder of the 27-track album, and it reaches for his older songs in addition to new themes. Empire’s evaluation factors out that the rating returns to the melody of When She Beloved Me in the mean time Jessie panics about being deserted once more.
So by the point Swift’s music arrives over the credit, the movie has already been quoting the tune it solutions. Newman has mentioned the music got here late within the course of and isn’t woven into his themes, so the echo is the movie’s doing.
You’ve Received a Good friend in Me is revisited too. The brand new materials features a brass and percussion motif with a male choir, which Amy Nicholson’s evaluation for the Los Angeles Occasions heard as “a rousing Viking chant”.
The album has additionally been again on the UK charts. It entered at No. 4 on the Official Soundtrack Albums Chart for the week of two to eight October 2026, after the soundtrack got here out on CD and vinyl in the beginning of the month. Neon has additionally coated Swift’s UK chart double with Affected person Zero.
The music works as a bookend to the movie. As a result of it was written aside from the rating, you’ll be able to hear precisely the place Newman’s acoustic Americana stops and Jack Antonoff’s manufacturing begins.
That leap from orchestral sweep to Antonoff’s slicker, extra compressed combine can really feel abrupt, and it reveals how in a different way music is combined now. As a stand-alone tribute to how far Jessie has come, the pairing works.
Evaluations had been heat with reservations. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 92% from 330 evaluations and Metacritic at 73, as of 18 October. Empire discovered it humorous and affecting however delicate on display time in contrast with the anger of WALL-E. RogerEbert.com’s evaluation favored the shift to Jessie however felt the movie performs it protected.
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw gave it two stars and mentioned the franchise “wants new batteries”, and IndieWire’s David Ehrlich, who was optimistic total, thought the plot undercooked.
Sarah McLachlan sang Jessie’s query in 1999. The reply took 27 years and, by Swift’s account, about eight hours.
