Taylor Swift returns to country with an original Toy Story 5 track tied to everyone's favourite cowgirl Jessie

Dubai: 'It's a Toy Story...' Taylor Swift has a new song coming, and this time it is for Woody, Buzz and the gang.

The singer has written and recorded an original track titled I Knew It, I Knew You for Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5, co-written with her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff. Disney is billing the track as a return to country for Swift, tied to the franchise's beloved toy cowgirl Jessie. Given that Jessie is one of the most iconic cowgirl characters in animation history, the pairing makes a certain kind of sense on paper.

Taylor announced the news on Instagram on Monday. "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," she wrote. She also revealed that the song came together almost immediately after an early screening of the film. "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?"

The track reunites Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff, who last worked together on The Tortured Poets Department, and will be available from June 5 as a CD single through her webstore, with acoustic and piano versions available alongside the studio recording.

Toy Story 5 plot synopsis

Toy Story 5 arrives seventeen years after Toy Story 3 left an entire generation of viewers quietly falling apart in cinema seats, and seven years after Toy Story 4 gave Woody a new chapter. This time, the threat facing the toys is not a new owner, a daycare, or an antique shop. It is something considerably more familiar to any parent watching from the back row: a screen.

The film introduces Lilypad, a high-tech smart tablet voiced by Greta Lee, who quickly becomes the shiny new object in the playroom and the biggest challenge Woody, Buzz and the rest of the gang have ever faced. Children are increasingly glued to their devices, and the toys are finding themselves ignored, obsolete and fighting for relevance in a world where a tap on a glass screen can deliver instant entertainment. It is a premise that is almost uncomfortably timely, and one that gives the franchise something genuinely new to say rather than simply retreading familiar emotional ground.

Director Andrew Stanton, who previously helmed Finding Nemo and WALL-E, brings that same ability to wrap a quietly devastating message inside something that looks, on the surface, like a colourful adventure for kids. The question the film is really asking is one parents have been wrestling with for years: what happens to imagination, to play, to the simple joy of a toy in a child's hands, when a device can do everything a toy cannot?

Tom Hanks returns as Woody, Tim Allen as Buzz, Joan Cusack as Jessie, Annie Potts as Bo Peep and John Ratzenberger as Hamm, with Conan O'Brien also joining the cast. The original score comes from Randy Newman, back for his fifth Toy Story film.

Toy Story 5 hits cinemas on June 19. I Knew It, I Knew You is available to pre-order now on Swift's webstore ahead of its June 5 release.