Which Folklore song immediately follows Taylor Swift’s “august” in the standard track list?

Taylor Swift’s “this is me trying” immediately follows “august” on Folklore’s standard track list.

“august” is the album’s eighth track, and “this is me trying” is track 9. The neighboring songs share a reflective mood, although they tell different stories. “august” focuses on a temporary summer romance and the narrator’s realization that the relationship was never fully hers. “this is me trying” turns inward, presenting a speaker who acknowledges struggle, regret, and an effort to continue.

The sequence is part of Folklore’s broader emotional design. Rather than using a single plot from beginning to end, the album moves among imagined characters, personal-sounding reflections, and historical or fictional scenes. This makes adjacent tracks interesting to compare without requiring them to be chapters in one continuous story.

A common mix-up is confusing “this is me trying” with “illicit affairs,” which appears later on the album. “illicit affairs” is track 10, while “this is me trying” is the immediate successor to “august.”