Taylor Swift’s “August” is featured on her eighth studio album, Folklore.
The album marked a major shift in Swift’s songwriting. Rather than presenting every song as a direct account of her own life, she created fictional narratives involving imagined characters, relationships, and historical or fantastical settings. “August” follows a teenage girl caught in a short-lived summer romance with James.
Folklore was Swift’s eighth studio album overall and her second album released through Republic Records. It arrived unexpectedly in July 2020, with little advance promotion compared with her earlier releases. The surprise strategy became one of the album’s defining parts of its cultural impact.
The number eight can be confused with the album’s release year, 2020, or with Swift’s seventh album, Lover, released in 2019. “August” belongs to Folklore, not Evermore, although Evermore followed later in the same year and continued Swift’s interest in fictional storytelling.