Taylor Swift’s brother couldn’t tell her why she needed to see Toy Story 5. He just knew she would.
Swift joined director Andrew Stanton for a Q&A after a New York City about her original song for the film, which centers on Jessie. The two talked about how the song came together in a matter of hours, why Jessie means so much to Swift and the Randy Newman legacy she was writing toward.
How Taylor Swift ended up writing for ‘Toy Story 5’
Swift said the pitch came while she was in the middle of a grueling tour, from her brother Austin, who handles her music syncs.
“It was pretty physically exhausting, and it was a 3.5-hour show. I’ve actually never experienced this level of exhaustion in between shows, where I was in bed all the days that I wasn’t playing a show, just trying to rest up for the next weekend of shows,” Swift said. “My brother calls me up and he’s like, hey, I really think you need to see the new Toy Story 5. I went to Pixar, I saw sketches. You’re going to love it. And I was like, well, why? He’s like, I signed an NDA, Taylor. I can’t tell you why. Which is when we flip into sibling, and I’m like, oh, you can’t tell me why you signed an NDA.”
When she finally saw it, she understood.
“When I saw this brilliant film that Andrew made, I realized exactly why he knew I would love it, because it’s centered around Jessie, who’s my favorite character, and it deals with female friendship. I just saw so many ways in which my life echoed what Bonnie was going through. I could relate to the revelations that Jessie was experiencing,” Swift said. “It was like a struck-by-lightning moment of, I have to go home, get to my piano and write this song.”
Andrew Stanton on the day Taylor Swift wrote the song
Stanton said he always knew the film would be about Jessie, and briefly hoped Swift could write its song before bracing himself for a no. Then came a series of phone calls.
“You saw it that morning with your brother and Tom MacDougall, who runs Disney Music, and that was at 10 o’clock. Then at 1:20, my FaceTime rings, and it’s from Tom, but it’s you and Austin. You’re still in your seats and you’re gushing about the movie, and you said you want to do the song,” Stanton said. “There wasn’t even a debate about this or a discussion. We’re like, great, great, great, and we almost got off so that you couldn’t change your mind.”
“I go home that night, and Tom calls me and says, she wrote the song. I’m like, what? No, no, no. She found it, or she had it already and she relabeled it. And he’s like, no, she’s in the studio and she’s written the song, and I’m driving right now to hear it,” he continued. “Then another four or five hours goes by. It’s 9 o’clock, and my FaceTime rings, and it’s Bob Iger standing next to Taylor going, the song’s amazing, Andrew. And I’m going, what is going on? What is my life right now?”
He said hearing it in person moved him.
“I got choked up when I heard it. The only other time I’ve heard a song that just dropped from thin air and was perfect was when Randy Newman came in and played ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ on a piano with six of us, and it was profound,” Stanton said. “It was Jessie personified. It was yearning requited. It was nostalgia revived. It was childhood conjured back up.”
Taylor Swift on writing a song for Jessie
Swift said the song is built around the idea that people who matter to you stay with you.
“What I kept arriving at is the importance of people’s impact on your life, even if it has waxed and waned and gone in and out of your periphery. If someone meant something to you, then there’s a good chance they always can, and that it could always kind of come back around,” Swift said. “I loved the idea of toying with both literal and allegory and having one line mean both things.”
She explained that several lyrics work on two levels, evoking childhood memories while also nodding to the toys’ literal point of view, including a line about blades of grass seen from a toy’s height and a reference to the parachuting army men from the original films. At the center of it all is Jessie.
“Overall, I want it to apply to Jessie and Emily and the feeling that she arrives at, which is this really incredible feeling of mature, resolute clarity. All that doubt she felt throughout the whole film. Am I no good at being a toy? Am I pointless? Is it useless to try? Things we all go through in our lives,” Swift said. “I think parents go through this when their kid goes through a different phase of life and is wanting freedom and independence, and you have to learn how to say these little goodbyes, but you also have to learn how to value what was.”
She wrote the song with Jack Antonoff, with an ear toward Newman’s work on the franchise.
“I really wanted to work with one of my best friends, Jack Antonoff. He is a Toy Story kid as well and also a huge Randy Newman fan, like a freak fan,” Swift said. “I wanted to reach for chords that are really different than what I would ever do, but might land in the world of something Randy Newman might do, because I really don’t want us to do something that’s incongruous with this beautiful tapestry that Randy’s been weaving for all these years. He built this beautiful pool we get to splash in.”
Her top priority in the arrangement was harmonica.
“I was like, we have to give this to her. We have to go back to Woody’s Roundup. A lonesome harmonica can really convey sadness and also anticipation and coziness,” Swift said. “It’s returning back to the country roots that began my career, and sounds that I haven’t toyed with in a very long time. And the fact that I get to go back to the CMAs now because of this song is fantastic. I haven’t been there in over a decade.”
Why Jessie matters to Taylor Swift
Swift said the film’s friendship story reminded her of her own life after moving to Nashville as a teenager.
“When I moved to Nashville when I was 14, you’re the new kid in school. But there was one girl named Abigail, and she even has curly hair too, like Blaze, and the two of us, all we wanted to do was talk in Napoleon Dynamite voices. We still do this, and it’s something our husbands have to put up with,” Swift said. “When you find that person who completely sees you for the strange little genre that is you at your purest, that hit me so hard watching the film.”
She said she was 5 when the franchise began and was hooked on Jessie from her debut in Toy Story 2.
“I never knew I was missing her until she showed up. This girl is so cool and so herself and so unapologetically enthusiastic, and sometimes she’s too much for people. I think so many people saw themselves in Jessie’s utter fearlessness,” Swift said. “And also her vulnerability. There’s no cynicism to her. There’s a purity that sometimes pierces your heart to watch her, but it’s ultimately so affirming.”
Andrew Stanton on why ‘Toy Story 5’ centers Jessie
Stanton said Jessie was the character with the most left to explore.
“I just knew that Jessie held a lot of deep, unaddressed stuff. Woody kind of deserves a break. He’s been through a lot. He’s been solved to a certain degree, but not Jessie,” Stanton said. “Missing that chance of connecting with that person that really sees you for who you are is probably the highest-stakes thing we’ve ever had in a Toy Story movie, and I loved that that was on Jessie’s watch, because she was somebody that already had abandonment issues and doubted her ability to hold a child.”
He said the film’s guiding idea took on new meaning with Swift’s involvement.
“What I landed on was, our limited time with others can last a lifetime. That was literally pinned up on my board for years,” Stanton said. “This 10-year-old who saw Toy Story 2 would help me land the plane with the most apt emotional song about her closure. I realized, oh, this song didn’t come out in a day. It came out in a lifetime.”
He added that the franchise has always aimed past box office.
“We were bold, young and passionate, and we were like, we don’t want to be in just a successful movie. We want to be a great movie. And we don’t mean that by box office or reviews,” Stanton said. “We want to make a movie that’s so good that the grandparents insist, when they have a grandkid, that this is a movie they make sure their grandkid sees. That puts you in a very different mindset. Sometimes it leaves money on the table. We’re in the grandparent business.”
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