Taylor Swift is breaking down the layered wordplay behind I Knew It, I Knew You, the song she co-wrote with Jack Antonoff for Toy Story 5.
Speaking during a rare appearance on country radio’s iHeartCountry House Party broadcast on Saturday, September 5, Swift explained that several lines in the track were deliberately written to carry more than one meaning, a challenge she attributed to the format itself.
“I love that the lyrics of this song are really being delved into by the fans,” she said.
“There are several lyrics that have more than one meaning to them. You only have so long in a song to convey and surmise and sum up this entire film that people just watched. Sometimes you’ll try to have a double meaning in a line.”
She pointed specifically to the opening lines, “I knew you through the daze of the blades of the grass in summer / Parachutes for the free fall of being younger.”
Swift explained that “daze,” while spelled d-a-z-e in the official lyrics, was meant to also evoke “days,” describing it as intended to capture “a childhood daze of you look back and you see this sort of blurry, beautiful memory that’s kind of blurry at the edges,” while also nodding to the literal scale of the film’s toy characters, who see the world from roughly the height of blades of grass.
She offered a similar dual reading for the parachute reference, tying it to the franchise’s plastic army-man toys while also framing it symbolically as someone who helps soften another person’s “free fall” into adulthood.
Swift said the attention to lyrical detail is a defining part of how she writes.
“It’s, kind of, been brought to my attention, and I agree with this, that I love to use detail in my lyricism,” she said.
The song serves as the soundtrack contribution for Toy Story 5, which was released in theaters this past June.
