Taylor Swift surprised the world when she dropped folklore on July 24, 2020, just hours after she announced the project on social media. It was both her first surprise release and her first album that didn’t center around her own experiences, a major departure after she built a pop-crossover empire writing songs about her life. Songs like lead single “cardigan” and the haunting “epiphany” channeled new perspectives through both imaginary characters and real-life people who have passed away.
As Swift celebrates her album’s one-year anniversary, Genius compiled a guide for those who want to get lost in folklore. Learn more about each of the six characters Swift embodies on the record below:
James is a teenage boy who cheats on his girlfriend, Betty, with another girl over the summer. He’s named after Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s daughter James, who says the famous intro on Swift’s 2017 track “Gorgeous.”
After his affair, James tries to win Betty back and details this experience on “betty”:
I showed up at your party
Will you have me? Will you want me?
Will you kiss me on the porch in front of all your stupid friends?
“I’ve written so many songs from a female’s perspective of wanting a male apology that we decided to make [the song ‘betty’] from a teenage boy’s perspective of apologizing after he loses the love of his life,” Swift said in folklore: the long pond studio sessions. “Because he’s been foolish.”
James’ girlfriend, Betty, narrates her view of the affair on folklore’s lead single, “cardigan.” Like James, she’s named after one of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s daughters, who was born in late 2019. Swift explained in the long pond studio sessions that “cardigan” is about Betty looking back on the affair “twenty to thirty years later” after she and James reunite:
A friend to all is a friend to none
Chase two girls, lose the one
When you are young, they assume you know nothing
While James blames his infidelity on the fact that he’s “only seventeen and [doesn’t] know anything” on “betty,” the bridge of “cardigan” challenges his immaturity with a simple “I knew everything when I was young” before Betty reflects on how she “knew” James cheating would have a profound effect on her. Despite this, she “knew [he’d] come back to [her]” when he got bored of cheating, offering a bittersweet glimmer of hope in a situation where Betty could easily be vengeful and refuse to give James another chance.
Augustine shares what it was like to be “the other woman” in James’ affair on “august,” a fan-favorite track that details her heartbreak. There’s a sense of melancholy in the lyrics, and whereas Betty’s “cardigan” is packed with details and imagery, Augustine’s song is more repetitive, mirroring how she had less time and memories with James since he was “never [hers].”
“She seems like she’s a bad girl, but really, she’s not a bad girl,” Swift explained in the long pond studio sessions. “She’s a really sensitive person who really fell for [James] and she was trying to seem cool and seem like she didn’t care, because that’s what girls have to do. She was trying to let him think that she didn’t care but she really did, and she thought they had something very real. And then he goes back to Betty.”
Wanting was enough, for me it was enough
To live for the hope of it all
Cancel plans just in case you’d call
Another lyric that showcases the sadness Augustine feels is the “so much for summer love” sentiment on the bridge. Augustine was falling for James, while James dismisses their affair as “just a summer thing” on the chorus of “betty.”
Inez, another character named after a daughter of Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, is the only teenage character who doesn’t narrate a song. James mentions her gossiping on the second verse of “betty”:
You heard the rumors from Inez
You can’t believe a word she says most times
But this time, it was true
It’s also possible Inez is one of Betty’s “stupid friends” James mentions on the bridge.
Rebekah Harkness, who owned Swift’s Rhode Island mansion before she bought it in 2013, is one of two nonfictional characters on folklore. “the last great american dynasty” describes how Rebekah felt like an outcast in her coastal town when people blamed her for her husband’s heart problems, shamed her for being the “maddest woman” in the area, and picked fights that prompted Rebekah to dye their pets green. Eventually, Rebekah stopped trying to impress her neighbors, much like how Swift stopped letting the media dictate her life in the time leading up to her 2017 reputation album:
Rebekah gave up on the Rhode Island set forever
Flew in all her Bitch Pack friends from the city
Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names
And blew through the money on the boys and the ballet
And losing on card game bets with Dalí
On the bridge of the song, after mentioning Holiday House’s vacancy after Rebekah died, Swift spins the narrative with a slick “then it was bought by me.”
“I had been wanting to write a song about Rebekah Harkness since 2013, probably,” Swift confessed in the long pond studio sessions. “And I’d never figured out the right way to do it because there was never a track that felt like it could, kind of, hold an entire story of somebody’s life and move between generations.”
Swift mentions her veteran grandfather, Dean, on the striking “epiphany,” a track that likens the fight against COVID-19 to the battles he experienced:
Keep your helmet, keep your life, son
Just a flesh wound, here’s your rifle
Crawling up the beaches now
‘Sir, I think he’s bleeding out’
And some things you just can’t speak about
“I had been doing a lot of research on my grandfather who fought in World War II at Guadalcanal, which was an extremely bloody battle,” Swift shared in the long pond studio sessions. “He never talked about it. Not with his sons, not with his wife, nobody got to hear about what happened there. And so my dad had to do a lot of research, and he and his brothers did a lot of digging and found out that my granddad was exposed to some of the worst situations you could imagine as a human being.”
Swift also snuck a photo of Dean into her “cardigan” music video:
