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Folklore Teenage Love Triangle (My Interpretation) ❤▲

It has been really cold and rainy these past couple of days. So naturally I've been listening to the album Folklore by Taylor Swift as it is perfect for this weather. While listening it really got me thinking about the love triangle that consists of three songs off the album “Cardigan”,“Betty”, and “August”. I will do my best to very briefly try and explain the connection between these songs. There are three main characters to this story Betty, James, and Augustine. 

Betty (song Cardigan)

Betty is a high school student who is dating one of the other characters a boy named James. However, problems arise when she finds out from a side character, the town gossip Inez that James has had a summer fling with Augustine. Betty is left very hurt by this, the song "Cardigan" is from her perspective set 20-30 years after the affair. Here she is looking back at the situation and explains that James really put her though it, stating "Chase two girls, lose the one".  I know by now you are probably wondering if she ever forgave James in the song she states,"I knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired/And you'd be standin' in my front porch light/I knew you'd come back to me." This kind of leaves it open ended for the listener, you can either chose to believe that she took him back when he came back or not. In her documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Sessions Taylor herself says "In my head, I think Betty and James ended up together, right? In my head, she ends up with him, but he really put her through it.”

James (song Betty)

Now we have James a 17 year old that claims he does not know anything. James goes to school with Betty. The song "Betty" is from James perspective, where he is singing to Betty asking for her forgiveness over the summer he spent with Augustine. He claims that the entire time he was with Augustine he was thinking and dreaming about Betty. This song is set during the time of the actual affair. James tells Betty that he knows she heard the rumors from Inez. Stating, "you can't believe a word she says most times, but this time it was true. The worst thing that I ever did was what I did to you". He basically admits to the affair and spends some time explaining what happened and trying to make up for what he did. He shows up to Betty's party and wonders what the outcome is going to be "But if I just showed up at your party Would you have me? Would you want me?Would you tell me to go fuck myself? Or lead me to the garden?" 

Augustine (song August) 

Augustine is pretty interesting because she is portrayed as “the other woman". Personally I don't think she goes to school with James and Betty because she spends time wondering if James would call her once he's back at school. In her song “August” she refers to the summer she spent with James as a summer love. However, in "Betty" James refers to it as a summer thing showing us that he did not have feelings for her like she did for him. Augustine was always hoping for more with James always picking him up in her car, meeting him behind the mall, and even going as far as canceling her plans just in case he called. She really fell for him but ultimately realizes that he never felt the same for her as he did for Betty. "So much for summer love and saying "us" 'Cause you weren't mine to lose...'Cause you were never mine". Personally Augustine is my favorite out of these three main characters and that is mainly due to this quote from Taylor where she talks about "August" and explains Augustine. "she seems like she's a bad girl, but really she's not a bad girl. She's like really a sensitive person who fell for him and she was trying to seem cool and seem like she didn't care ... but she really did and she thought they had something very real. And then he goes back to Betty. So the idea that there's some bad villain girl in any type of situation that, like, takes your man is really a total myth because that's not usually the case at all. Everybody has feelings and wants to be seen and loved—just, like, Augustine, that's all she really wanted too.” 

more in depth connecting lyrics: