Week of June 5th, 2026
Credit: Billboard
Three genuinely different corners of the industry showed up this week, all in an unexpected mix! From a Disney movie ballad to a concept album's first single and the back half of a breakup record, the week’s versatility was enjoyable even with the occasional lows (that are, you know, evident for anything really.) Taylor Swift closed things out by finally releasing “I Knew It, I Knew You,” the song she wrote for Toy Story 5 after reportedly getting emotional at an early screening while ROLE MODEL beat her to the punch by two days with “High Hopes 3000,” the first taste of his truly, “Chuck Timely & The Hourglass” (out August 7th). Somehow, it was ROLE MODEL’s first-ever Hot 100 hit! A very overdue milestone for an artist so successful from a “slower-burn” perspective. And Malcolm Todd rounded things out on release day for his third album, “Do That Again”, released in full on June 5th via Columbia Records. Let's get into it!
1. Most Streamed Song of the Week – “I Knew It, I Knew You” by Taylor Swift (8.5/10)
“I Knew It, I Knew You” was released June 5th as part of the soundtrack for Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5, written and produced with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff after Swift reportedly got emotional watching an early cut of the film. The obvious pull of this one? It's a song for Jessie, and Swift has been open about Toy Story meaning something to her since she was five years old, watching the original in theaters. Evidently, that personal history is doing a lot of the emotional heavy lifting with her ability to execute the song’s need for quiet, deep emotion; the song is built around the idea of recognizing someone from your past and realizing the connection never left, dressed up in an upbeat, country-pop arrangement stacked with banjo, mandolin, strings, harmonica, along with 10 other insturments in the arragnement. Considerably, this is Swift operating in a mode she's mastered by now, a.k.a. the nostalgic reunion ballad, with its multi-instrument production flex, and the lyric that's ostensibly about a cartoon toy but plays just as well as a breakup-adjacent metaphor for the grown adults in the audience. It's charming, it's well-crafted, and it will absolutely soundtrack a thousand theater cries this summer.
2. Lyrical Standout – “High Hopes 3000” by ROLE MODEL (8.5/10)
In this, there is one obvious hook within the lyrics: a single question buried in the chorus: does love come around, or does one come around to it? Evidently, the whole song is built to answer that question and never quite manages to, which is sort of the point. Pillsbury is working through the character of Chuck Timely (on the album title) here, using the persona as a vehicle for something that reads as deeply personal: modern loneliness, the specific self-sabotage of wanting hope and already being convinced you'll ruin it the second it arrives. Considerably, the image of being “stuck inside the fences like a goddamn dog” creates an imagination of that feeling of entrapment from one’s own self-induced pattern-like behavior or society’s overwhelming expectations. In this song, there doesn’t come a resolution, and artistically, there’s a lot of appreciation that can be found in this choice by ROLE MODEL.
3. Sonic Standout – “Difficult Love” by Malcolm Todd (7/10)
“Difficult Love” arrived June 5th as the sixth track on Malcolm Todd's sophomore album, “Do That Again”. And it's easily the most sonically loaded moment on the record. There’s a bass-heavy, hip-hop-tinged bounce paired with sharp, biting guitar work (think of flicking the guitar), a combination that feels smooth and satisfyingly right. Evidently, this is Todd circling back to the genre-fluid instincts that made his earlier work stand out in the first place, layering over-saturated vocals on top of a slower, dreamier pace than most of the rest of the album.
But, despite the many positives, there's a real crack in the song’s cardiovascular foundation. The song abruptly cuts off mid-line on its final chorus and can offer an audience a conclusion that might not be as positive as expected. While some have read it as an intentional interruption on the cycle of self-destruction running out of runway, I for one am not convinced by this explanation. Truthfully, I might even say that it was a mistake when bouncing the track from whatever DAW is being used by Malcolm. I don’t believe I even heard silence before the next song played. A little weird, no? And while I am certainly not alleging any careless mistake such as wrongfully downloading a cropped version of a song, the outcome is still shaky, and creates hesitation to see if this decision was truly an artistic decision. At least, there could have been some kind of obvious “finish” to the song—a closing cassette tape or the sound of the end of a film roll, or the closing of a door. The abruptness is rude and questionable for artistic integrity.
