Taylor Swift’s “august” appears on her eighth studio album, Folklore.
Released in 2020, Folklore marked a major change in Swift’s presentation and songwriting approach. Rather than centering every song on plainly autobiographical material, the album used invented characters, imagined settings, and connected storylines. “august” is part of that fictional method.
The album followed Lover, Swift’s seventh studio album, and came before Evermore, her ninth. This sequence is a common source of mix-ups because Evermore arrived only a few months after Folklore, in December 2020. Both albums were created during the pandemic period and share several collaborators and visual ideas.
Folklore was also Swift’s first album released through Republic Records. Its cottagecore-inspired artwork and fictional narratives helped establish the setting in which “august” became associated with late-summer nostalgia.