Taylor Swift Folklore “Love Triangle” Review

The twisted fate of Betty, James, and Augustine isn’t a happy ending or a star-crossed lover's story. It’s a complicated tale of a love triangle gone wrong. Taylor Swift, years later after releasing Folklore, is playing songs from the album on her Eras tour. 
by Ansleigh Hester and Mackenzie Ragan

Eras Tour

The Eras Tour was Taylor’s most notorious tour as of now. People were fighting over tickets to see her perform songs from every album. Each of her albums show a different part of her life, hence why the tour is called “Eras”. 

Taylor has shown how much she loves performing on stage by her big smiles and the way she gets into every single one of her songs. She is passionate about music and her lyrics. 

Taylor’s “Midnights” album has been in the long time coming and the fact it was on the top of the charts after one week shows how hard she worked. 

This is only the beginning of the tour, and she still has more than half to go.

Folklore by Taylor Swift was one of her much more emotional albums. Each song had a deep and significant meaning. She sang about love, loss, and back again. She wanted to create this album. Taylor Swift states, on Twitter, “In isolation, my imagination has run wild and this album is the result. I’ve told these stories to the best of my ability with all the love, wonder, and whimsy they deserve. Now it’s up to you to pass them down.”


"Cardigan" 
“Cardigan” is the aftermath of the broken love triangle. It’s Betty reminiscing about her relationship with  James. The context of the song is more in the past tense of James trying to win her over after he cheated on her. This suggests that they never got back together. The Vulture explains the song in more detail, “Cardigan” is narrated by a woman we’ll later learn is named Betty, looking back with hindsight on an intense relationship from her youth. (Swift says she was inspired by the image of “a cardigan that still bears the scent of loss 20 years later.”) There’s a small hint in the lyrics — Betty says that James “tried to change the ending,” tried being the operative word. It didn’t work; the ending was what it was.” 


"Betty" 
“Betty” is a song about James and Betty. The song is told from Jame’s perspective. Showing how he feels throughout the lyrics of the song. In the song it says, “You heard the rumors from Inez 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” In the song is seems as though Inez was trying for get James and Betty apart. James is trying to reason with Betty and it shows how he thinks about the situation. The entire song it seems as though he is trying to apologize in his own way. He is trying to get Betty back because he loves her so much. 

Further on in the song, James says, “I'm only 17, I don't know anything but I know I miss you.” He seemed to be in love with her, even as she moved on. Later on, he says, “I saw you dance with him.” He’s upset she moved on because he knows she still loves him as much as he does. 


"August" 
Many fans have called the narrator of “August”, Augustine. This is her side of the story about the love affair between her and James. She reminisces about the summer they spent together, and the abrupt ending of the affair. “Will you call when you're back at school? I remember thinkin' I had you, But I can see us lost in the memory August slipped away into a moment in time, 'Cause it was never mine.” Augustine is depicted as the other woman that ultimately wasn’t the love of James’s life. She knew that he wasn’t hers and in the end he left her like she knew he would. 

Augustine is a person that many relate to not because she is the other woman. It’s because she wants someone she can’t have. She falls for a boy who, in reality, loves someone else. The Buzzer elaborates, In "Betty", James expresses that the affair “was just a summer thing,” and in "August", Augustine tells us “so much for summer love and saying ‘us.’”

(AP Photo/Ashley Landis)