The Love Triangle in Taylor Swift’s Folklore
I swear, Taylor Swift single handedly tried to save us during the pandemic and I am here for it!
With Folklore and Evermore both coming out in the same year, you can bet I had hours worth of ugly-cry songs to choose from.
I’ll be completely honest, when Folklore first came out, I didn’t listen to it at all until I saw Olivia Rodrigo post that her favorite song from the album was Betty, and I was like “Who is Betty?”
So I listened to the song and I instantly fell in love with it…until I watched the documentary about Folklore on Disney Plus.
And now I only have one thing to say:
James can go jump off a bridge! Betty and Augustine (or Augustina, whichever you prefer) both deserve better!
I mean, don’t get me wrong, the song is an absolute bop, but after Taylor Swift explained the whole trio of songs, I was totally on team August.
Let me break it down for you:
August, Betty, and Cardigan are a trio of songs about the same three people: Betty, Augustine (or Augustina) and James (which BTW are named after Blake Lively’s children)
Here is how each of those songs fit into the story:
Betty
Betty tells the story from James’ point of view, about how he made a mistake and is now asking Betty to take him back.
“I was nowhere to be found, I hate the crowds you know that, plus I saw you dance with him.”
James describes how he saw Betty dancing with another guy at what I’m assuming is a high school dance.
“You heard the rumours from Inez, you can’t believe a word she says, most times, but this time it was true.”
This line is a super important part of the song, talking about how cheating on Betty was the worst thing that James did.
“I was walking home on broken cobblestones just thinking of you when she pulled up like a figment of my worst intentions.”
Now this is where everything goes to (excuse my language) shit, and you immediately want to hate the girl who pulled up and “coerced” James into cheating on Betty.
The chorus describes James asking Betty if she would forgive him if he showed up on her front porch at her party (party crasher much?).
Now like I said, the entire time I was listening to the song, I wanted James to take Betty back. I hated this girl who came in between them and immediately painted her as some sort of villain standing in the way of theri happy ending.
But of course, not everything is black and white, which is why we need to take a look at the next song.
August
I love this song! It might even be my favorite in the entire album.
So in the documentary, Taylor Swift talks about how we immediately want to paint this other girl as “evil” or whatever (which I am totally guilty of doing) but she’s a person with real feelings too.
This song looks at the situation from the girl that James cheated on Betty with, Augustine or Augustina (I’ll just refer to her as Augustine for now).
“August slipped away like a bottle of wine, cause you were never mine.”
The chorus of the song really focuses on the memories that Augustine has of her and James of their time together, before she admits to herself that he was never hers to begin with, i.e. he was Betty’s.
“Remember when I pulled up and said ‘get in the car.’”
You see the parallel with Betty?
“Cancelled my plans just in case you called, back when I was living for the hope of it all.”
In this line, you really get those teen crush vibes. I can definitely imagine naive Augustine waiting by her phone, hoping that James would call her. She fell completely head over heels for him, but unfortunately he was thinking about someone else the entire time.
“Wanting was enough. For me it was enough. To live for the hope of it all.”
This is the line that gets me every time. I think you could totally interpret it a different way but for me, I can just imagine Augustine just being happy that James was paying her any attention, hoping that that would be enough to make him stay.
But of course, Betty and James are the “happy ending” couple, so of course, Augustine is painted as the “mean girl” and left heartbroken in the end.
Cardigan
And then of course there is poor Betty.
Cardigan is a little less literal in it’s lyrics but still a story that is worthy of being told.
From the very beginning, we see the parallels between Betty and Cardigan.
“High heels on cobblestones.”
Just like James, walking home on those broken cobblestones. In my mind, Betty was walking on the same cobblestones after the school dance (hence the high heels, because I don’t know about you but I would save my feet the pain of high heels unless it was a special event) and saw James get into Augustine’s car.
“Chase two girls, lose the one.”
Of course, James thinks he can go after two girls at once, and he ends up losing Betty.
“When you are young they assume you know nothing.”
“Cause I knew everything when I was young.”
These two lyrics both contradict Jame’s line in Betty:
“I’m only seventeen. I don’t know everything”
I like to think this was Betty’s way of letting James know that he should have known better.
“And you’d be standin’ in my front porch light and I knew you’d come back to me.”
This is that scene in Betty where he’s standing on Betty’s porch during the party to ask for her forgiveness. And of course she had been hoping he would come back to her, even though she totally deserves better.
“And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone’s bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite.”
The most iconic line in the song is of course the last line. Betty felt discarded, like an old cardigan that someone just tossed under their bed and forgot about.
But James picks her over Augustine in the end, and all is good in their world…right?
I guess that’s up to you to decide but between you and me, it is definitely not your fairytale happy ending.
In Conclusion
James sucks.
No, I’m just kidding (or am I?) but I definitely think Betty and Augustine both deserve so much better.
The way that Taylor Swift was able to weave these three songs with each other to create this whole narrative is honestly AH-MAZING and I was so blown away when she explained it.
I will definitely be crying my eyes out listening to these songs on repeat for at least the next month before I’m emotionally healed again.
Until next time,
Xoxo, Joy.
