Taylor Swift debuted a new song at Friday night’s Stand Up to Cancer benefit, called “Ronan”, about a 4-year-old boy who lost his battle with cancer last year.

Taylor wrote the song after reading Ronan’s mother’s blog, Rock Star Ronan, and she even gave Ronan’s mom, Maya Thompson, co-writing credit on the song. Maya details in the blog about how she got the call from Taylor days before the Stand Up to Cancer benefit:

“Hi Maya! How are you?” she said in that sweet darling voice of hers.
“Hi Taylor! I am well, how are you?” as if she was just another one of my everyday friends.

My calmness soon turned to complete and utter frozen shock when these words came out of her mouth.

“I wrote a song for Ronan,” she said. The tears started pouring down my cheeks as soon as I heard her say those words. But her words didn’t stop there. Not only did she write a song for you, but she wanted to know if it would be alright to perform it on the nationally televised Stand Up 2 Cancer show which is on every major network and is seen in over 100 countries. She wanted to know if she could use a picture of you in the background while she sang the song. She wanted to make me co author of the song with her. She talked about how from reading this blog and following our story, has inspired her and how amazing she thinks I am and all I am doing, to bring awareness to childhood cancer. She went on and on about some other things, which I tried to understand and reply to, but I couldn’t focus on a thing besides the fact that she wrote a song, for you. That she hadn’t forgotten about your beautiful blue eyes and our love story. One so powerful that Taylor Swift decided to write a song about it. This cannot be real. But then I remembered, this was you she was talking about. Of course this is real, because you are that beautiful and that amazing and our love is that strong. I don’t even remember what I said to Taylor as had buried my head into your blanket that I take with me everywhere and all I could pretty much do was cry and tell her thank you.

The song opens with the lyrics, “I remember your bare feet down the hallway/I remember your little laugh/Race cars on the kitchen floor/Plastic dinosaurs/I love you to the moon and back.” And if that doesn’t make you cry, you’re dead inside.

Taylor held back tears during the performance, but many of the stars on hand for the benefit were crying in the wings as she sang. Following the performance, the song was released on iTunes. It currently sits at #1 on the singles chart. The song it bumped from the top spot? Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”.

See Taylor’s performance from Friday night: