“Cardigan” gives Betty’s perspective in the Folklore love triangle that includes Taylor Swift’s “august.”
The three connected songs are “Cardigan,” “august,” and “Betty.” “Cardigan” is associated with Betty, “august” follows the unnamed girl involved with James during the summer, and “Betty” presents James’s perspective as he looks back on his actions.
The songs do not function as three versions of the same recording. Instead, they use separate narrators and scenes to build a shared fictional story. That structure was part of Swift’s broader approach on Folklore, where imagined characters and invented histories replaced the strictly autobiographical framing often associated with her earlier work.
A common mix-up is identifying “Betty” as Betty’s song simply because her name appears in the title. In the trilogy, “Betty” is sung from James’s viewpoint, while “Cardigan” is the song tied to Betty’s perspective.