Jack Antonoff created the initial instrumental that Taylor Swift wrote the lyrics to for “august.”
Antonoff produced the instrumental first and sent it to Swift. She then wrote the lyrics quickly, describing the process as an intuitive response to the music. This order of creation helps explain why the finished track feels driven by atmosphere as much as by a conventional pop-song blueprint.
The instrumental supports a hazy sound built from keyboards, strings, guitar textures, and reverb. Swift’s lyrics place that sound inside a fleeting summer romance, giving the production a sense of motion, distance, and nostalgia.
Aaron Dessner is a particularly plausible wrong answer because he was one of Folklore’s principal collaborators and produced many of its songs. Joe Alwyn also worked on the album under the name William Bowery. Nevertheless, the documented initial instrumental for “august” came from Antonoff, who also shares the song’s writing and production credits with Swift.