Taylor Swift – I Knew It, I Knew You Review 

Imagine the volume of vinyl variants you can shift to kids. That may be the thought process behind Taylor Swift being hauled onto the good ship Pixar for Toy Story 5. A franchise that should’ve ended two films ago bringing on a pop sensation who prints album variants like it’s going out of style. Two eras we should leave in the past, and yet are set to endure once more with I Knew It, I Knew You, a standalone single from Taylor Swift that, at time of writing, already has three separate releases. There’s something to be said for the attention span of listeners but also for the capitalisation of dedicated fans. They’ll buy what they can and when they can if you offer it to them because they’re not thinking about the quality, only the quantity. Who owns most is best serving their beloved pop star. Swift rolls out the harmonica and looks to entrance a whole new subsection of a generation halted in their tracks by the new and the shiny.  

Randy Newman is hauled out of the studio, kicking and screaming as his name is scribbled out on the pot marked for royalties. I Knew It, I Knew You is not just a representation of Swift, the genre chameleon whose best works were when she toyed around with the stripped-back acoustics of Evermore and Folklore, but a representation of how we consume new media. A new phase is now an era, a new era means what we already know but dressed up as something apparently fresh. Those same characters, that same style, it’s all come together to give Swift a platform to peddle a song that’ll have been brainstormed to be the perfect encapsulation of a moment that will connect and comfort the next generation to be brought up on a film series that has so far fostered two generations. Having grown up to correlate harmonica and soft percussion with 1970s Bob Dylan, there’s a second at the start of I Knew It, I Knew You where it feels like there’s been a grave mistake.  

But the only mistake comes from allowing Swift to play dress up with the fragile memories some will hold for Toy Story. She has a knack for making even the most instrumentally warm genres sound hollow and cold. This is not through her writing or performance, but just the image she presents as a pop sensation. Swift is commercial and popular. The latter is not a problem, but creating for the sake of the former is sick and twisted. I Knew It, I Knew You splashes around in shallow waters and makes no real impression. Instrumentally sound, performed well with Swift’s consistent, strong voice. It’s just not a song that has anything evocative to it. There’s a real attempt to like this one; it’s a far stretch better than The Life of a Showgirl. There are visits to cemeteries more enjoyable than that album.  

Swift hasn’t quite got a message to present here other than a watered-down version of You’ve Got a Friend in Me. It’s the Hollywood style, pearly white smile and a vacant look behind the eyes that has come to be very popular in the last few years across the board with creative executives. I Knew It, I Knew You has a little flicker of life to it, and that comes from Swift’s strong vocal range. You cannot knock her talent for the studio. She has an incredible ear for a worthy hook or catchy riff, but it’s incorporating that into a song with meaning, with emotion and power, that she has struggled with over the last few years. There’s not all that much to influence your life when it’s jets, faux fawning over fan support, and American football executive suites. Swift has lost touch with reality, but when it mattered most, when asked to write and record a song about youth and friendship, she falls short.