Taylor Swift has found an unlikely thread connecting Toy Story 5, Folklore and one of the most devastating songs in her catalogue.
During an intimate appearance at Los Angeles’ Grammy Museum, Swift delivered a surprise six-minute piano mashup weaving together “I Knew It, I Knew You”, “August” and “All Too Well”, linking the songs through their shared fascination with memory, nostalgia and the moments that refuse to loosen their grip.
Footage of the previously under-wraps event was released by the Recording Academy this week, revealing a performance reminiscent of the acoustic surprise-song medleys that became a nightly feature during Swift’s record-breaking ‘Eras’ Tour.
“This is the piano that I brought with me all around the world on the ‘Eras’ Tour,” Swift told the fewer than 200 people inside the museum’s Clive Davis Theatre last week.
She explained that, towards the end of the tour, she increasingly began combining songs based on an emotional or musical “through line”. Had the ‘Eras’ Tour still been running, she said, this particular medley would have made the cut.
The connection this time was memory: three songs looking back on vivid moments and the significance they take on long after they’ve passed.
Beginning with “I Knew It, I Knew You”, Swift moved almost imperceptibly into “All Too Well” before the brighter tones of “August” emerged. By the finale, lyrics and melodies from all three songs had become tangled together, echoing the kind of elaborate mashups that sent Swifties into detective mode throughout the final stretch of the ‘Eras’ Tour.
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The performance followed a 42-minute conversation with Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr about Swift’s evolution as a songwriter, from her country beginnings to Reputation and beyond.
Swift said she feels increasingly connected to the Nashville scene that shaped her early career, admitting she loves her country roots “more and more” as the years pass.
She also reflected on learning to build entire sonic worlds around emotion while making Speak Now, pointing to the fairy-light rush of “Enchanted”, the lullaby quality of “Never Grow Up” and the deliberately banjo-heavy bite of “Mean”.
Discussing Reputation, Swift described the album as a response to feeling deliberately misunderstood during a period of intense public backlash. Rather than respond with sincerity, she leaned into satire and theatricality, turning that frustration into songs including “Look What You Made Me Do”.
But perhaps her sharpest observation came while discussing the idea of “confessional songwriting”.
Swift argued that simply revealing something shocking or personal does not automatically make a song meaningful. Details, she said, need to serve the story.
Watch the full video below.
