“Unlocking the Meaning of Taylor Swift’s ‘August’: A Deep Dive into the Lyrics of ‘Folklore'”

It’s the season of salt air, rust on your door, and living for the hope of it all. It’s officially August, and Taylor Swift fans are celebrating the start of the new month by playing “August” on repeat. Released as part of Swift’s 2020 surprise album Folklore, the song is once again making waves on social media, with Swifites celebrating August before it slips “away into a moment in time.”

Perfectly listed as the eighth track – August is the eighth month of the year – on Swift’s 16-track eighth studio album (17 tracks if including the deluxe album bonus song “the lakes”), “August” is not only a song about summer love, but an extremely complicated romance. The song is part of a trio of songs that share a connected story – “Cardigan,” “Betty,” and “August” – about a teenage love triangle. “Cardigan” is told from the point of view of the girl named Betty, whereas “Betty” is told from the point of view of James. “August,” meanwhile, is told from the perspective of the third person involved in the love triangle, who finds herself mourning a summer fling and what could have been

The song begins with the protagonist singing of “salt air” and “the rust on your door” and idolizing the summer romance and how she “never needed anything more.” However, the romance was doomed to fail, and as the song transitions into the chorus, the protagonist sings of a romance doomed to end, one she wishes could be more permanent: “But I can see us lost in the memory / August slipped away into a moment in time / ‘Cause it was never mine / And I can see us twisted in bedsheets / August sipped away like a bottle of wine / ‘Cause you were never mine.”

As the song continues, Swift sings of the affair with lines like “will you call when you’re back at school? / I remember thinking I had you” and “So much for summer love and saying ‘us’ / ‘Cause you weren’t mine to lose / You weren’t mine to lose, no.” The song also reveals how significant the romance was to the protagonist, with “Cancel plans just in case you’d call / And say, ‘Meet me behind the mall.

A fan-favorite among Swift’s albums, Folklore marked a break from Swift’s typical trend of remaining quiet about the subjects of her songs. After dropping the album, Swift told fans, “one thing I did purposely on this album was put the Easter eggs in the lyrics, more than just the videos. I created character arcs & recurring themes that map out who is singing about who.” Swift added, “For example, there’s a collection of 3 songs I refer to as The Teenage Love Triangle. These 3 songs explore a love triangle from all 3 people’s perspectives at different times in their lives.” Those three songs turned out to be “Cardigan,” “Betty,” and “August,” with the singer later opening up about the connected story in her Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions documentary.

What happened in my head was, ‘Cardigan’ is Betty’s perspective from 20 to 30 years later, looking back on this love that was this tumultuous thing. In my head, I think Betty and James ended up together. So, in my head, she ends up with him, but he really put her through it,” she revealed. “‘August’ was about the girl that James had this summer with. She seems like she’s a bad girl, but really she’s not. She’s a sensitive person who really fell for him, she was trying to seem cool and seem like she didn’t care…but she really did, and she thought they had something really real. And then he goes back to Betty. So, the idea that there’s some bad, villain girl in any type of situation who takes your man is actually a total myth because that’s not usually the case at all. Everybody has feelings, everybody wants to be seen and loved and all Augustine wanted was love