Is Taylor Swift’s New Song “I Knew It, I Knew You” Country?
Ever since Taylor Swift went full-blown pop with her 2014 album 1989, there’s been numerous murmurs, head fakes, false starts, and inferences that certain songs from her have been a return to “country” by the massive global superstar that started in the country genre, even if she was never exactly “country” to begin with. These country accusations were especially prevalent around the release of Swift’s albums Folklore and Evermore in 2020 that certainly had more folk and acoustic moments than Swift fans had become accustomed to from previous records.
But it’s a song from the soundtrack to Toy Story 5 released on Friday, June 5th where Swift writes from the perspective of the cowgirl character Jessie that has Disney and others calling the song “country” or at least “country inspired.”
Written by Swift with producer and twang killer Jack Antonoff, “I Knew It, I Knew You” also comes with other indications we’re supposed to consider it country. This includes the short-form video accompanying the song on Spotify showing a toddler-aged Taylor Swift dressed up like a cowgirl. Most conclusively, the metadata for the song that’s displayed publicly by Apple Music expressly states the song is slotted in “country.”
More than any musical genre, the best way to describe “I Knew It, I Knew You” might be that it’s a Disney song—saccharine, inoffensive, probably catchy and easy to please after a few listens, but designed for mass appeal to younger audiences as opposed to the more adult audience of the country genre.
The song starts off a little country, with harmonica and a rather straightforward beat. It’s really when the lyrical delivery kicks in that the song gets taken out of any real country consideration. By the end of the song, the harmonica gets completely buried in the layers upon layers of production that includes two saxophones, Mellotron, Celesta, and other stuff for Jack Antonoff to earn his pay. Even calling the song “country inspired” feels like a stretch.
Will “I Knew It, I Knew You” have any actual impact on the country genre?
It would have been cool of Taylor Swift really twanged up the song to meet the more twangy moment in both country, and popular music. Some are surmising that maybe a move back towards country will be Taylor’s next play, and this Disney track is just a precursor.
When Swift moved away from country, it was to remove the glass ceiling above her career. Now that the glass ceiling has been shattered by the likes of Ella Langley, and to an extent performers like Morgan Wallen and Post Malone. Maybe now there is an avenue for Swift to make a country return and not take a hit on revenue or popularity.
But country isn’t the same genre it was when Taylor Swift left. When Swift started her career, country was already moving aggressively in a pop direction thanks to performers like mid-career Kenny Chesney, and late career Shania Twain. The [Dixie] Chicks were one of the few popular performers with real country sounds, and they had recently been cancelled. Swift then appeared on the scene and pulled country even more pop.
Listening now to a song like “I Knew It, I Knew You,” and regarding it beside recent hits from Ella Langley, or even Megan Moroney with all the steel guitar on her songs, the Swift song sounds like adult contemporary for kids. It was probably a country song in 2009 when Swift first won the CMA Award for Entertainer of the Year. In 2026, it just sounds like another Taylor Swift song.
They might try to service “I Knew It, I Knew You” to country radio as a single. They tried that with “Betty” from Folklore, but the best it could do is #32. Then the murder ballad “No Body, No Crime” from Evermore stalled at #54. It’s hard to see “I Knew It, I Knew You” doing any better, or competing for CMA/ACM/Grammy country awards.
The more interesting question might be if Swift does try to make a more “country inspired” album as her next move. But if it’s as “country inspired” as the new song, it will be hard to call it country at all. This is no shade at Swift. But the reason she left country is because she was mislabeled there by her own assessment, and wanted to be honest with her fans. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to make that same mistake twice.
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June 5, 2026 @ 11:44 am
Sounds country enough for me. I like it, and I could see this fitting icon country radio.
Billie Eilish was originally slotted to have the TS5 song, but was dropped by Disney after the Oscars fiasco. Thank heavens, because ,- country or not – this is far better that whatever sleep srudy inspired, boring slog Eilish would have submitted.
June 5, 2026 @ 3:10 pm
Disney did not drop Eilish.
June 5, 2026 @ 11:51 am
Even if it is, its not the sort of country id give time of day too.
June 6, 2026 @ 12:13 am
Totally agree. As I’m typing this the wife is playing it on Spotify. Can’t here a fiddle or a steel
June 5, 2026 @ 12:11 pm
Whenever a country artist moves towards another genre, be it rock, pop, or similar, the question is always “which is the real artist”, meaning, was the artist a “real” country artist only shifting to a a different, more commercial, style for the benefit the commerciality, or were they never “true” country artist and only done that due to being active in Nashville or where there was a country scene and played country by default until they can move to what they really wanted to be, a rock or pop or whatever. The answer can be divined once said artist makes it and now can choose their own path. If they return to country, either for good or as a side project, then we can safely assume that they were always “in their heart” country artists, but if they don’t then it’s the “she did country because that’s what it took to become famous in where she lived”.
At this point in her career Taylor Swift can release an album where she reads selected Ninth Court of Appeals depositions translated to Swahili with a Jamaican dancehall production if she likes. The fact that she hasn’t sone anything even remotely adjacent to her original pop-country albums ever since she stopped making these should end this discussion of “return to country”.
June 5, 2026 @ 12:28 pm
hey trigger
can you please review the lainey wilson and john mayer song as well as the song writing team behind the song
it is called Phone, Keys, Wallet and is this song also country?
also as for taylor
this girl can do what she wants
she has earned her stars in both pop and country.
I dont understand why trigger hates or dislikes taylor swift?
June 5, 2026 @ 12:44 pm
As I said in the article, this is no shade at Taylor Swift. I’ve said many times over the years that I respect her as a songwriter, and one of the other reasons I respect her is that when she decided to go pop, she made a conscious effort to come clean about it and say she didn’t want to disrespect fans by calling herself or her music something that it wasn’t. I don’t think this is a bad song. I just don’t think it’s particularly country. That’s the question I wanted to broach and try to answer.
I did listen to the Lainey Wilson/John Mayer song , but kind of failed to see the point of it. I decided to write about this song instead. Maybe I’ll say something about it in the future.
June 5, 2026 @ 12:50 pm
I will say I’ve found the rollout to Wilson’s next album such a mess.
First we got “Can’t Sit Still” which apparently was just a promotional single. Now we have this: which sounds like a partial soft reboot of sorts.
I wonder if there’s some internal shifts and/or friction happening at her label.
June 5, 2026 @ 12:57 pm
lainey has been the chosen queen of country for like 4 years or since COVID
the powers that be have now decided it is ella langely
so maybe lainey’s team are trying to balance that out
June 5, 2026 @ 1:00 pm
the song is ok, I think it is a hybrid of soft country and pop but what struck me about the song is how very not oscar worthy it is
the way the media were hyping the song, It felt like taylor will be a shoe-in for an oscar nomination in 2027 but from what I can see, I don’t think this song will be strong enough to make the court
i think the song she did for the hunger games series was better
June 6, 2026 @ 12:58 pm
“…and one of the other reasons I respect her is that when she decided to go pop, she made a conscious effort to come clean about it and say she didn’t want to disrespect fans by calling herself or her music something that it wasn’t.” This plus what you said in the article, where on Earth are you getting this from? and do you have any sources to back up these claims? Because this is just blatantly not true. Country was her first love, all she wanted was to be a country writer. She got signed to a publishing deal on music row at 14 before she got her record deal and she asked them not to give her songs to other artists and let her try to get a deal. She could’ve had a stable job as a writer but she knew what she wanted and it was to write and play her own songs. Her parents moved to Nashville so she could follow her dream. She talks about her love for country extensively, even as recent as her new NYT interview. She says that she knew it “had to be country”. People in her Pennsylvania high school literally made fun of her because she was obsessed with country music. The things that you and another commenter imply about her only using country as a springboard to do what she really wants to do couldn’t be further from the truth and it’s actually pretty insulting. She’s an artist that wants to express herself, she can do any genre she wants, whenever she wants, and that will never take away her country work and the love she has for country music. the fan base right now is literally talking about how excited they are for debut TV to come out, the re-recording of her first ever album, which she’s told us in her open letter on her website she’s already finished recording, and as with every other re-recording it will have vault tracks that have never been on an album before. Debut and reputation are the only re-records left and she said that she never even finished re-recording reputation before she got all her masters back, so it’s most likely that debut will be next, especially since its 20th anniversary is coming very soon.
The fans are making edits and discussing this song I Knew it, I Knew You in multiple ways, the obvious Toy Story layer on the surface, then the other potential meanings: Her finally getting her masters back, her first 6 albums coming home, which was extremely emotional for her. “you’re the best thing that’s ever been mine” and “you belong with me” were both used by her or her team in conjunction with her getting them back. We just celebrated the anniversary of the announcement of her getting them back, May 30th. The other meaning is her talking to herself, to younger Taylor. and people have been also applying that to their own life and talking to their younger self. The canvas on Spotify for the song is a baby Taylor marching around in a cowgirl outfit and a red and white Jessie hat, because she’s loved Toy Story since she was 5. So it makes sense for her to release debut TV at some point in the next year. Meaning we’ll be getting brand new country Taylo, but they’ll be songs she wrote as a kid. so nostalgic and perfectly goes with the Toy Story song. and to be clear, she already did this with Fearless TV, her 2nd country album, Speak Now TV, her 3rd country album with rock and pop-punk influences, and Red TV, her 4th country album with rock influences and a couple pop songs sprinkled in. She moved to 1989 because she didn’t win the Grammy for Red and one of the critiques was that it wasn’t sonically cohesive, so she set out to make an entirely 80’s synth pop record, named and themed after her birthday being 1989. She has country-adjacent songs on Evermore and TTPD, (Fresh out the Slammer and I Can Fix Him are like western saloons, it’s not straight country, no, but it has obvious influences from country). And that’s part of it, she uses everything she learns and applies it to the next thing she does, a lot of her songs even though they aren’t in the country genre still use a lot of the same country writing techniques that she admired and learned at a young age, like song structure and storytelling and twists. I understand that you don’t see Betty and nobody no crime as country enough whatever that means but they are very country to me, and they’re obviously influenced by her past work in country. Wikipedia lists them as country and Americana. and as you said they went to county radio, so obviously they were considered country enough for them.
But regardless of what genre she does in the future, it doesn’t mean she never truly loved country and that she has to come back to it and make a brand new modern country album just to prove she wasn’t “pretending”, I find that absolutely ridiculous. she already conquered that mountain already, why wouldn’t she move on to other genres? some artists stay in the same genre for their entire career but that is just not the kind of artist she is and she’s proved that by doing tons of different sub-genres at this point. Her second album beat so many country records and won her AOTY, she toured with tons country greats for years, she has lots of country specific accolades under her belt. she’s the kind of person that doesn’t like to do the same thing twice, those are her words. she likes to challenge herself. most of her fans are begging for a full rock album and I personally would love that and I also want more jazz and musical inspiration, because I love what she’s done with the songs that have Broadway influences. I also want her to use more weird instruments, I want her to experiment more, I want her to use a harpsichord! I want her to collaborate more, and even though I love her country work, I genuinely hope that TS13 is not a country album.
I don’t mean any of my comment to come off rude or disrespectful at all I’m just extremely confused by your article, your comment, and other comments in this thread talking about her as a country artist. I mean this in the nicest way possible but I genuinely think that you guys don’t really know that much about her and you would need to look at a lot more interviews from her to really understand what you’re talking about. again, it just requires more research than I think y’all have done. You’ve come to conclusions that don’t really align with reality and I’m not even sure where you got them from. her die hard fans are begging for a new country album and they genuinely think it might come one day and it very well might. country is her first love, she’ll never toss that aside, she loves her old work. when debut TV finally comes out those country charts are going to be looking very Taylor again 🫶💕✨
June 6, 2026 @ 1:01 pm
one correction, I said Pennsylvania high school, but I think it was middle school, I’m not entirely sure, but I always forget what age people start high school at.
June 6, 2026 @ 2:52 pm
That’s fine you don’t see it as country, but you review many songs and artists that also aren’t strictly country in the sense of old 70s or 80s or 90s country even, and you never focus as strongly or repeat the same disclaimers as much that they are non-country as much as you push it for Taylor. Retrospectively, her first album is to me more country than many of the current albums that are accepted as country by many hard-nose country purists. Now, everyone else may disagree with me on any or all of my thoughts and statements here, but that is how I see it.
June 5, 2026 @ 12:29 pm
There has always been room in the big country tent for quality pop country (think Anne Murray, Al DeLory-era Glen Campbell, a lot of Kenny Rogers, a lot of Crystal Gayle, etc.) and Taylor’s first few albums (IMHO) were quality country pop. This song? Meh…
June 5, 2026 @ 12:47 pm
My verdict is no.
That said, it isn’t any less so than earlier career singles of here like “You Belong With Me”, “Ours” and “Love Story” were, and yet they were successfully pushed as hits on country radio.
My main issue with “I Knew It, I Knew You”, though, is that both musically and compositionally it feels and sounds like it never kicks into another gear. I didn’t even realize what the song’s chorus was until I heard it repeated and thought: “………that’s it? It just felt like one long meandering verse!” There’s just not enough emotive flow and range here.
Sarah McLachlan’s “When She Loved Me” this certainly is not.
June 5, 2026 @ 1:14 pm
Is it country? Not really. It’s not noisy or busy or intrusive. This is just a light pop song for a summer Disney movie parents will bring their kids to see.
Does she want to have a toe in the country market anymore? I sort of doubt it.
June 5, 2026 @ 1:28 pm
Country music will never be the no. 1 musical style around the western world.
By the time a Nashville song dominates the chart, it’s transformed to anything but country, but still labelled so by the greedy industry. They all went pop or rock or worse, from Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline to Willie Nelson and Taylor Swift. Choir, strings, synths or loud guitars rather than flat-picking, steel and fiddles.
June 5, 2026 @ 1:39 pm
Why can’t she just grow up like everybody else, and start making the music she WANTS to make, and damn what anybody else thinks. I doubt any of us would want to listen, but then she could at least be respected.
June 5, 2026 @ 4:05 pm
I think she is doing what she wants and she’s “respected” pretty much how she’d like, given her extraordinary wealth and influence.
June 6, 2026 @ 1:14 pm
She literally IS doing what she wants. She has been since the very beginning. where on Earth did you get the idea it was anything different? have you ever even heard her speak about her music and her career? She goes into depth about what SHE wants and her vision for her art. These are her songs written by her about her life. She’s loved Toy Story since she was 5. she’s made about 9 other songs for movies, she enjoys it. I don’t understand where you got the idea that she’s not doing what she wants to do. Country was her first love and she still loves it, then she literally had to fight her label to make 1989 and she did it, and then she left them after reputation so she could have even more control over everything and own her masters. she worked on re-recording her first six albums so she could own them again and eventually she was able to buy them back, after years of missing them. that included the music videos she made, which even when directed by someone else were her vision and her ideas. they includes the poems/prologues she writes for every album, the photo shoots, her tour films, all the way down to the watercolors she painted for the reputation album art. (yes, she paints, sews, and bakes as hobbies). and if you look at behind the scenes footage of her concerts, she’s choosing the outfits with her stylist talking about things she’s inspired by, she’s helping to pick out choreography and where people will stand and what kind of extra things they do in the show. she writes and directs almost all of her music videos since the Man from Lover. she made a short film for her 10 minute song All Too Well. she’s set to write and direct a feature length movie. And she literally IS respected by her peers. Paul McCartney, Stevie Knicks both love her, she sang a Carole King song to induct her into the hall of fame. she literally has thousands of awards and the respect of billions of people on Earth globally. most of the people that don’t respect her or her work haven’t actually listened to it. she has 271 songs, and yes, I have heard every single one at least one time. I, and all of her fans, have the utmost respect for her and tons of her talented peers also have respect for her. where are you getting your ideas from? watch her documentaries like the Miss Americana documentary and the Eras tour docuseries on Disney+ or her NYT interview she just gave for the best 30 living American songwriters. she’s a songwriter first and foremost, but she is multi-talented. and she is absolutely doing it exactly what she wants to do. not sure what would make you think otherwise.
June 5, 2026 @ 1:46 pm
I know you said it in the article, Trig, but Swift was never remotely country. That was simply the genre they chose to launch her in. I get a kick out of artists who say they are leaving one genre to go to another. Most of them were already in the genre they leave. Like you, I respect Swift’s songwriting skills (having the advantage of writing with some of the best songwriters in the world in her formative years didn’t hurt), but her music has always been geared to preteens, soccer moms, and thirty-year-olds who are seventeen in the head.
This song sounds like a cross between Tom Petty and ABBA. It’s actually not bad as background noise, but I wouldn’t listen to it again on purpose. At this point Taylor could fart into a microphone and her fans would buy it, so I’m sure the song will do well.
June 5, 2026 @ 1:48 pm
*most were already in the genre they leave for.
June 6, 2026 @ 1:30 pm
“they” didn’t choose anything. you’re factually wrong and you can’t just re-write history and claim it as true with no evidence. Country music was her first love. she grew up in Pennsylvania and her parents moved to Nashville just so she could pursue her love of country music the kids in Pennsylvania literally made fun of her for it. she got a publishing deal before she ever got a record deal and she asked them to please let her wait till she got a record deal and not give her songs to other artists. she had a job writing music at 14, because Sony saw her talent. she was writing songs at 12 in her bedroom, she talks extensively and in depth for the last 20 years about her love of country music and her start in the music industry and nothing you’ve said is accurate. why would you want to talk about a subject without even knowing what you’re talking about at all? if you want a critique her or her career wouldn’t you want to actually know anything about that first to begin with? where do you even get the ideas you’re writing about in your comment? since they’re not reality you obviously didn’t get them from a documentary or an interview or reading about her it’s like you just made it up in your head and then assumed it was true and then you went on to critique a thing that you made up that never even happened.
her songs are written by her about her life they are her diary coming alive. she was not managed by a label she had to fight them every step of the way to do things exactly how she wanted to and she had a direct hand in every aspect of her career and we have video footage proving it and tons of the artists she worked with like Liz Rose also confirming it that she would come in the room with fully formed songs and they basically didn’t even do anything but edit slightly and she wrote her third studio album completely alone just to prove to people that said she wasn’t the ones writing in those sessions when she was. people like you have been lying about her since she was a teenager, just blatant lies, and you’ll most likely never even know you’re wrong because you’ll never listen to what she has to say or do the research into her life and career or I guess you’ll just call her a liar? it’s disrespectful. she literally has 4 country adjacent albums, yes they’re country-pop mixed with rock influences and some pop-punk on speak now, but it’s still country, just because you don’t like it and it has pop mixed in doesn’t make it country. that’s just how sub-genres work. you can say it isn’t true country or whatever that means but you can’t say that it’s not country at all, because it is. she was inspired by all the greats and she went on tour with a bunch of them too and none of them were silly enough to say “wah wah this isn’t REAL country”, and all the country awards she earned in that time speak for themselves. she herself said that she doesn’t like to do the same thing twice and she always likes to challenge herself, she’s done several different genres, some artists stick to the same genre their entire career but that’s just not who she is. her choosing to make pop albums doesn’t mean that her country albums weren’t real or that she was lying or pretending or something silly like that. all of those parts of her are her. I don’t know if you know this but human beings are complex nuanced complicated people who contain multitudes. I literally listen to every genre of music under the sun if I like it I listen to it and I make art in tons of different styles myself I’m not limited to one thing and why should any artist be?? if a painter one day decides to pick up sculpture that doesn’t mean they were never a real painter, they’re just BOTH now. she can do any genre she wants whenever she wants and it will never take away from the accolades and love that she has for her country work and country music in general. one of her mom’s favorite bands is the Dixie Chicks and she collaborated with them on a song called Soon You’ll Get Better on her 2019 album Lover, it’s about her mom’s cancer. her more recent songs Betty, Cowboy like me, no body no crime, Carolina, fresh out the slammer, I can fix him have country influences. she takes what she learns and then she moves on to try something new keeping the skills she acquired from the work she did previously. she was not manufactured by a room full of suits, and you have no evidence to prove that, you’re just assuming based on nothing. you can see footage of her as a little girl writing and performing songs on her guitar way before she got her publishing deal, which came before the record deal. a video of her opening a guitar for a Christmas present and screaming enjoy saying, “I’m so happy!”. she’s a human being, not a product. imagine you feel if people constantly lied about you on the internet and discredited your hard work?
June 5, 2026 @ 2:54 pm
Taylor wants an Oscar. This her the best chance to get one – Toy Story 5 is a lock for a nomination for Best Animated Feature, and Toy Story songs have always done will in the Best Original Song category. She’s tried a few times by writing songs for less successful/prestigious films, but I dont see any world where this doesn’t at least get her a nomination, if not a win.
June 7, 2026 @ 5:55 pm
I think that’s why I feel so underwhelmed by it. She’s written better songs in the past for soundtracks/films that are better than this one, imo.
June 5, 2026 @ 3:11 pm
To get a song in a Disney movie, it has to be published with Wonderland Music, Inc (BMI). Or did Taylor get to keep the publishing on this one?
June 6, 2026 @ 6:22 am
She got to keep the rights on this one
June 5, 2026 @ 5:17 pm
I don’t know about a new country-ish album, but this is 100% the beginning of the rollout for the Taylor’s Version of her self-titled album which will likely release in the fall to commemorate its 20th anniversary. Yes, she’s been around for twenty years.
June 5, 2026 @ 7:06 pm
She owns all her masters now. Why bother? (Well, probably new packaging.)
June 6, 2026 @ 1:40 pm
she has a letter on her website that explains this when she got her master’s back. her fans love the re-recording project and they desperately want debut TV and reputation TV, the main reason being that she updates it with modern vocals and also improves on some of the songs, but the biggest drive is the vault songs. each re-record has brand new songs that were never on the original album. it also allows new fans that weren’t fans during the og era to experience it with the fans. it’s a lot of fun. she even gave us new music videos and lyric videos for the new albums. In the letter she explains that she has already finished re-recording debut, but that she never finished re-recording reputation because she didn’t feel like she could improve it. however, in the New York times article a while back she said that the reputation vault tracks were fire, so fans still expect to hear those some day. many people are excited for the debut re-recording because her mature voice will sound SO much better. the songs themselves are great, so with updated vocals and production, they can only improve! fans have been waiting years for debut and reputation and they definitely still want them, me included. in the letter she said that the re-records can still have their time if we still want that, which of course we do. 🫶
June 5, 2026 @ 6:24 pm
Country music, as defined by Cowboy Jack Clement is “Music Country People Listen To”
I like Taylor Swift, but this song is pretty boring.
June 6, 2026 @ 3:22 am
Couple of things here but first the song itself. I listened to it once, didnt really like it. It could be ok but didnt seem so. I didnt really analyze whether it was country or not. Being a music fan i dont look at music that way unless someone else is pointing it out first but luckily i listened before trigger posed that question. I still dontreally care. Its a song made for a kids movie. My baseball team voted this as the movie they want to see, i do that once every season for my teams. I suppose they might enjoy it and the song may sound better in that setting.
June 6, 2026 @ 7:14 am
“Being a music fan i dont look at music that way unless someone else is pointing it out first”
I totally respect that. In this instance, the song was being sold as “country” or “country sounding,” and by some as “Taylor Swift’s return to country.” If she’d released the song with nothing else said, I probably wouldn’t be talking about. I also probably wouldn’t assume it was meant to be country. When you sell it as country, mark the metadata as country, that’s when I’m going to ask the question.
June 6, 2026 @ 5:14 pm
I have no issue with that if that is the case. If they are marketing it as such, then yes the question is fair. Ill have to try to listen to it again.
June 6, 2026 @ 4:06 am
…at the right place in “toy story 5”, this slice of soundtrack by the amazing ms. swift may do the trick very nicely. as a stand alone feature it’s fine too – perhaps a notch to slow though. any country connection, however, is almost muskian: a starship doesn’t exactly make mars a ’round the corner destination.
June 6, 2026 @ 4:48 am
Apologies for the off-topic comment, but as a South Korean, I want to express my deepest gratitude to Charlie Louvin, Roger Miller and George Jones for their service. True heroes both on and off the stage 🙏🇺🇸🇰🇷
June 6, 2026 @ 6:07 am
@Trig, you always say Swift was never country to begin with, but I really disagree. Her debut album was undiluted country in my opinion – both lyrically and instrumentally. With Fearless, she took a big leap toward pop, but it was still solid pop-country. Especially compared to the pop-“country” we hear on country radio nowadays, Swift still maintained a country-rooted songwriting style and consistently used country-leaning instrumentation like banjo, mandolin, and fiddle.
Speak Now was where her music went full-blown pop-rock, but to say she never made country music to begin with is truly a stretch.
June 6, 2026 @ 7:18 am
Some of her earlier stuff was more country, and I’ve acknowledged that in the past. I’m not really here to re-ligigate her early catalog, but to focus on this song. What I will respectfully disagree about is that in 2005-2009 when Swift emerged, country was much LESS country than it is today overall. You hear much more steel guitar and twang these days.
June 6, 2026 @ 8:34 am
I was referring to country radio, not contemporary country music in general. I think there are A-listers in country music today (like Kacey’s last record) that bring out very traditional country music, but commercial country radio (where Taylor’s music mostly belonged to back in the days) is so much more pop in comparison to Taylor’s first two albums.
But I get the point nevertheless.
June 6, 2026 @ 6:19 am
Pixar hasn’t made a good movie since John Lasseter’s departure. .
June 7, 2026 @ 3:02 am
Correction: Lasseter hasn’t made a good movie since leaving Pixar due to his sexual misconduct.
Pixar on the other hand have made a few good movies since.
June 7, 2026 @ 8:45 am
Allegations of misconduct*
His Skydance work has been better than Pixar’s output.
June 6, 2026 @ 6:57 am
I am not sure I hear it as country and I am not sure I thought of any of her releases were really country. I thought her a talented songwriter and she has gone on to great success. I think she sold out London’s Wembley Stadium 10 times as well as many other stadiums around the world. Her music is not for me but probably not made for my ears. My daughter thinks she is incredible and that maybe is the market she is aiming at. Well done to her for her success. This song, not for me.
June 7, 2026 @ 12:28 am
I think it’s an inoffensive okay country-inspired by Taylor Swift. I enjoy it quite a bit. More country than Fearless, Speak Now and Red tbh.
June 7, 2026 @ 2:58 am
It’s a really nice song that makes me feel good in a world of chaos. Great that it’s a part of the latest installment in what is undoubtably the greatest quadrilogy in movie history thus far.
June 7, 2026 @ 8:46 am
Toy Story 4 was a piece of garbage like Forky.
The original trilogy is great, but vastly overrated, in the pantheon of Pixar movies.
June 7, 2026 @ 11:19 am
If you arent a kid, im not sure you should really have an opinion on a movie aimed at kids.
June 8, 2026 @ 3:26 am
Adults shouldn’t make movies or music aimed at kids, not to mention all the books some adult grumps wrote for kids and youngsters.
At least those kid clothes are made by kids.
June 8, 2026 @ 12:10 pm
The best Disney and Pixar films aren’t aimed solely at kids. They are aimed at families.
“You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.”
-Walt Disney
June 7, 2026 @ 1:06 pm
I like the song a lot actually. It’s cute and catchy.
June 9, 2026 @ 5:49 am
I would say that it’s more country-inspired pop than truly country. Either way, I’m not sure it’s Oscar-worthy but her best soundtrack song was completely snubbed (Safe & Sound) and I don’t know if she’ll ever recover from that. I do like the song, but I’m a longtime fan so I am habituated to her songwriting style.
I think a more interesting question re: Taylor’s late-career relationship with country is to unpack folklore and evermore and discuss the country influences there, musically and lyrically. And I’m not just talking about “Betty”. I hear a lot of country influences in “The Last Great American Dynasty”, “Seven”, “Invisible String”, “Tis the Damn Season”, “No Body No Crime” (of course), “Dorothea”, “Cowboy Like Me”, and “Right Where You Left Me”. I don’t think you can disentangle her storytelling lyrical style from her “country roots,” so to speak. Do I miss the fiddle and steel guitar? Sometimes. But I appreciate how she integrates the stylings of country in her pop and adult contemporary music. I think it really demonstrates how much she loves country music.
Also, I don’t think any of the other young contemporary country artists have written something as clever and catchy “Our Song”, since. She conquered her country style with that song (at just fifteen!), everything other “country” song she made was just fun. In my opinion.
A bit off topic, but I also think people overstate how much she’s lost her (fake) accent—you can hear it in some of her inflections even on some pop songs (it’s one of the things you start to hear more when you listen to other artists attempt to cover her songs). Another way I think her country “roots” peeks through her later work.
June 10, 2026 @ 7:22 am
One-word answer for the question in the hed: No.
All the rest is performative.
June 10, 2026 @ 12:40 pm
So far country radio appears to be biting. Mediabase shows it as #1 most added and entering the airplay chart in the Top 20, likely due to the heavy corporate-radio hyping. Whether it ultimately has legs remains to be seen.
June 11, 2026 @ 9:56 am
Ella Langley should take her to court. The song is so similar to one of hers
June 16, 2026 @ 3:23 pm
Something interesting: there’s already a second, piano, version of the song. I think it’s a major improvement over the “country” version that is being touted.
June 16, 2026 @ 3:26 pm
There is also an “acoustic” version that features more banjo and harmonica and is pretty “country” comparatively. But neither of these are the ones at country radio or topping the Billboard 100, so….
June 18, 2026 @ 9:09 am
I’ve found that I prefer her second takes on a lot of her songs. The Long Pond versions of most of her folklore album are more interesting to me than the originals. I’m not sure what that says about her music or production teams or label. Just a thing I’ve noticed.