Taylor Swift opened the Toy Story 5 promotional cycle with a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 debut, and she did it without releasing an album. “I Knew It, I Knew You,” the Disney/Pixar soundtrack single co-written and co-produced with Jack Antonoff, lands at the summit of the Hot 100 dated June 20, Billboard announced Monday, June 15. The debut moves Swift past Drake and Rihanna into sole third place on the all-time Hot 100 No. 1 list, behind only The Beatles (20) and Mariah Carey (19).
Inside The Numbers
Opening-week U.S. consumption: 27.2 million on-demand streams, 46.7 million radio audience impressions, and 87,000 sold across the June 5–11 tracking period. The sales total split into 70,000 from downloads and 17,000 from three CD single configurations — original, acoustic, and piano — with vinyl shipments arriving after the tracking week. The track also debuts as Swift’s 11th No. 1 on the Streaming Songs chart, her record-extending 32nd No. 1 on Digital Song Sales, and at No. 7 on Radio Songs — the latter making her the first artist with multiple top-10 debuts on the all-format Radio Songs chart since it launched in December 1998.
This is Swift’s ninth Hot 100 debut at No. 1, pulling her past Ariana Grande for the most ever among women. It is also her 70th career Hot 100 top-10, extending her record for most top-10 entries by a woman artist.
Why Pixar Took So Long To Get Here
The chart milestone has structural weight beyond Swift’s personal stats. “I Knew It, I Knew You” is the first Pixar song ever to top the Hot 100. It is only the third animated Disney song to do so in the chart’s 68-year history, following “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto in 2022 and Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle’s “A Whole New World” from Aladdin in 1993.
The structural reason Pixar had not previously delivered a Hot 100 No. 1 is mechanical. Randy Newman scored the first four Toy Story installments and received Academy Award nominations or wins for each soundtrack song, but those songs were built as embedded narrative pieces, not crossover singles. Disney’s main animation studio adopted the modern pop-star collaboration model first — Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Encanto score, Lana Del Rey on Maleficent, Billie Eilish on No Time to Die. Pixar stayed inside its house style longer.
The shift here is that Disney/Pixar approached Swift to write an original song after she saw an early screening of the film, then released the song two weeks ahead of the theatrical opening. The marketing flow ran in the direction opposite “Bruno.” That song rode Encanto‘s post-release cultural wave to the summit. “I Knew It, I Knew You” arrived first, with the film expected to be pulled by the song’s chart performance into a stronger opening weekend.
The Country Pivot, Engineered
Swift’s label coalition designed this single for country radio in addition to pop. Released through Walt Disney Records with simultaneous promotion via Republic Records and MCA Nashville, the song debuts at No. 8 on Country Airplay — a rare top-10 entrance on a format where new tracks generally enter outside the top 20. It also debuts at No. 9 on Adult Contemporary Airplay and inside the top 20 on Pop and Adult Pop airplay.
This is the first non-“Taylor’s Version” Vault Track that Swift’s team has promoted to country radio since she officially repositioned as a pop artist before 1989 in 2014. The instrumentation underwrites the format play: piano, guitars, drums, strings, banjo, mandolin, saxophone, and harmonica across 14 musical credits, with a folk-influenced bassline and layered vocal harmonies. Republic Records, the top Hot 100 label five years running, scores its third consecutive new No. 1, after Drake’s “Janice STFU” and Grande’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me.”
Rollout: Easter Eggs, Live Premiere, And A Hall Of Fame Induction
The promotional architecture leaned heavily into Swift’s signature rollout mechanics. Her website briefly displayed a 48-hour countdown with sky-blue and white cloud imagery on April 30. On May 29, Disney/Pixar billboards with the initials “TS” against cloud imagery appeared in cities worldwide, while the cover artwork for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was altered on streaming platforms to swap seagulls for five clouds. June 1 brought the formal announcement.
Swift performed “I Knew It, I Knew You” live for the first time at the Toy Story 5 world premiere at Dolby Theatre on June 9, then sat at a grand piano for a duet of “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” with Randy Newman to close the screening. Two days later, on June 11, she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame at the 55th annual ceremony at the Marriott Marquis in New York, becoming the youngest woman ever to receive that distinction. The chart announcement four days after the induction concentrated three of the calendar year’s largest Swift-related news beats into one week.
What Comes Next On The Chart
Toy Story 5 opens wide June 19 — a date that also marks the 20th anniversary of Swift’s debut single, “Tim McGraw,” from the same genre her chart-topping return is now broadcasting from. Industry analysts are watching the box office for a secondary streaming surge that typically follows a soundtrack-anchored release. A strong opening weekend gives “I Knew It, I Knew You” enough chart fuel to hold the top position for multiple weeks. An underperforming opening reshapes the battle with Grande’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” currently No. 1 on Global Excl. U.S., by month’s end.
Swift has now scored two Hot 100 No. 1s in 2026 — “Opalite” earlier in the year and “I Knew It, I Knew You” now — with no new studio album announced. Grande’s eighth album Petal arrives July 31.
