Forgotten Flings: Taylor’s “august” Meaning, Explained

august is a sultry, sexy song that describes one hot summer in the folklore love triangle. 

In the lyrics, sung from Augustine’s point of view, she and James have a blissful but secretive month together. She’s ready to continue this love affair forever, but James isn’t free for the taking.

What do the august lyrics mean, and what is Taylor trying to tell us in this song? 

Here’s my full breakdown of the august lyrics meaning, line by line.  

august by Taylor Swift

• Title: August
• Written by: Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift
• Track: 8, Folklore
• Pen: Fountain, with some quill 
• Lyrics from Genius

august Narrative Summary

• Setting: A memory of a hot summer fling. 
• Characters: Narrator (Augustine/Augusta, through Taylor), subject (James, “you”). 
• Mood: Nostalgic, forlorn, questioning. 
• Conflict: She thought he was hers, but he never intended to be hers. 
• Inciting Incident: “August slipped away into a moment in time.” 
• Quest: Figure out if any of it was real for him. 
• Symbols & Metaphors: August/summer, “rust on your door,” “are you sure” and “never have I ever,” “memory” and “moment in time”, “bottle of wine,” possession (“never mine” and “mine to lose”), “back at school,” “the hope of it all,” “saying ‘us’”. 
• Theme: Summer romance. 
• Imagery: “Salt air, and the rust on your door,” “August slipped away into a moment in time,” “ twisted in bedsheets,” “August sipped away like a bottle of wine,” “Your back beneath the sun / Wishin’ I could write my name on it”. 
• Lesson: You can’t lose what was never gained. 

What is august About? 

As Taylor told us in the folklore prologue, many of the stories of the album are from the perspective of fictional characters. Three of these songs intersect: cardigan, betty, and august, usually referred to as the “folklore love triangle.”

Taylor has described august as “Augustine’s” perspective in the context of the teenage love triangle portrayed in august, cardigan, and betty. 

The song describes a hot summer romance between Augustine and James, but the whole time, James has been cheating on his girlfriend Betty. 

Taylor explained: 

“And I’ve been kind of, in my head, calling the girl from ‘august’ either Augusta or Augustine […] ‘august’ was obviously about the girl that James had this summer with, she seems like she’s a bad girl, but really she’s not, she’s a sensitive person who really fell for him and she was trying to seem cool and seem like she didn’t care because that’s what girls have to do[…] she thought they had something really real. And then he goes back to Betty. 

So, the idea that there’s some bad, villain girl in any type of situation who takes your man is actually a total myth because that’s not usually the case at all. Everybody has feelings, everybody wants to be seen and loved and all Augustine wanted was love.”

-Taylor Swift, Folklore Long Pond Studio Sessions

Who is august About? 

August is – according to Taylor – about Augustine’s perspective on her summer fling with James. 

Whether these characters were influenced or based on real people in Taylor’s life, we’ll likely never know. 

Recently, fans have begun to theorize that it was based on Taylor’s relationship with Matty Healy while being on and off with Joe Alwyn. 

In May of 2023 during an Eras Tour performance, Taylor dedicated Cardigan to someone and mouthed: “this one is about you. You know who you are. I love you.” 

If cardigan is about Matty Healy, then Taylor is Betty and Augustine is a third unknown person. 

This is all completely speculation, but it’s an interesting theory that Swifties have long ruminated on.  

august Lyrics Meaning: Line by Line

The first verse opens with the gorgeous, evocative imagery of: “salt air, and the rust on your door.” 

“Salt air” likely means a seaside town somewhere: the kind of air that rusts any metal it comes into contact with.

“Rust on your door” kind of feels like a car door (like “your Midas touch on the Chevy door”), but it could also allude to creaky hinges of a front or back door to his house. 

“I never needed anything more,” she says. To this day, she has not needed anything like she needed him. 

“Whispers of ‘Are you sure?’” is innuendo, suggesting that they’re about to have sex for the first time. But it also evokes a kind of secret or forbidden romance. 

“‘Never have I ever before’” could mean that one or both of them is a virgin. They’re entering unknown territory, either physically or emotionally.

“Never have I ever” is also a popular teenage drinking game, so it could mean they’re getting drunk and spilling secrets. 

Chorus: “August Sipped Away Like a Bottle of Wine”

“But I can see us lost in the memory,” she says, from her position now in the present. 

Augustine is looking back on the past, and she was just as lost in him then as she is now. It was so exciting and thrilling that it all went a bit hazy, past and present.  

“August slipped away into a moment in time / ‘Cause it was never mine” means the only evidence it ever happened is in her (fallible) memory. As soon as it happened, it was gone. That summer didn’t belong to her: she was swept up in him, almost like an out-of-body experience. 

“And I can see us twisted in bedsheets” describes passionate moments with him, and also alludes to another Taylor lyric: “all of you, all of me intertwined” from Daylight. 

“August sipped away like a bottle of wine,” she says, changing “slipped” to “sipped.”

To “sip” something away is to enjoy every last drop, and if it’s wine, it goes down smooth and makes you relaxed and happy. That is what this magical month did for her. 

But it’s now gone, like the bottle of wine, “‘cause you were never mine.” He wasn’t hers to keep or to hold. She only got him temporarily, and now he’s gone. 

🩶 Can you pass my tricky folklore Lyrics Quiz? 🩶

Verse 2: “Wishin’ I Could Write My Name on It”

“Your back beneath the sun / Wishin’ I could write my name on it” conjures imagery of a sunburn. She wants to “brand” him as hers, burned into his skin.  

(Side note, but interesting: Sabrina Carpenter, who opened for Taylor on the Eras Tour, uses this imagery in her Espresso music video.)

“Will you call when you’re back at school?” she recalls asking him when the summer ended. When he went back to school in the fall, would they still talk? Would he still remember her? 

“I remember thinkin’ I had you,” she says, but she was mistaken. The summer ended, and their romance ended with it. 

Bridge: “You Weren’t Mine to Lose”

“Back when we were still changin’ for the better” was when all this happened. It was inside the grand possibilities of youth, where you still have the world laid out in front of you.

They were still changing and growing, and she was hopeful. This fits into the larger theme of folklore: what you lose when you grow up and grow old. 

“Wanting was enough,” she says, “for me it was enough.” She lived for the thrill of it: hoping he’d call, hoping he’d stick around in the autumn. 

“It was enough / to live for the hope of it all” means she didn’t need all of him. She only needed the possibility that it would happen. 

This alludes to the famous Emily Dickinson Poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” in which she says: 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

-Emily Dickinson, “Hope is the thing with feathers”

Dickinson tells us that hope never quits, and this is what’s happening for Augustine: it fuels her, and she can live on hope alone. She’ll “cancel plans just in case you’d call” – rearrange her whole life for hope alone. 

She lives for the moment he’ll phone her to say “meet me behind the mall.” She longs for that secret rendezvous, meeting in his car, creaking open the rusty door to climb inside. 

But it wasn’t to last. “So much for summer love and saying ‘us’,” she says, “‘cause you weren’t mine to lose.” He was never hers in the first place.

There was no “us,” and it wasn’t “summer love.” It was just a fling. For him, it was temporary, and a mistake. We get James’ perspective in betty, where he sees Augustine as a mistake.

“You weren’t mine to lose,” she repeats, consoling herself that it wasn’t that great of a loss, because it was never gained. 

Outro: “But Do You Remember?”

The final chorus repeats, then the outro repeats portions of the bridge. 

“You were never mine,” she repeats, “never mine.” The subtext of “never mine” is “nevermind.” ‘Forget about it’, she thinks. But she can’t.

She can’t help but ask: “but do you remember?” It’s as if she needs confirmation that it was real; that it really happened. Was it all in her imagination, or was he really there with her for one hot month? 

This outro is very similar to the sentiment of All Too Well (10 minute version), where she repeats: “you remember it” and “I remember it.” 

In both songs, she’s focused on how memories can linger, and what it means if you can’t forget. Was it a shining, beautiful moment? Or was it so traumatic that you can’t ever let go? 

For August (Augusta, Augustine, whatever you want to call her), it was all too real. She was falling for him, and devastated when she realized he wasn’t hers for the taking. In his mind it was only temporary, and in her mind it could have been the start of forever. 

But, as Taylor tells us, Betty and James end up together, and all August is left with is the memory of him: summer wine, the rust on his car door, and meeting behind the mall. 

Even when she had him, was he ever really hers? 

🩶 Can you pass my tricky folklore Lyrics Quiz? 🩶

August Meaning: Final Thoughts 

August parallels the sentiment of many of Taylor’s lyrics, but the one thing that differentiates this track is that she’s told us it’s about fictional characters. Even so, we can see that she imprints her own emotions and experiences onto this teenage love triangle (if, indeed, this is fictional). 

August ruminates over memories like Taylor does in All Too Well, Betty pours over how James made her feel like in This Love, and James apologizes to Betty like Taylor does in Back to December (just a handful of examples; there are many more parallels). 

Can we ever separate the art from the artist, especially with a songwriter like Taylor who is so diaristic? Can we ever see fictional characters as fiction, or will we always try to overlay Taylor’s personal life onto her lyrics? 

It’s a unique scenario, and Taylor knows that we will always try to connect the dots. Especially given the recent cardigan “confession”, do you think Betty, James and August(ine) are true works of fiction? Or is this Taylor’s attempt to protect the guilty? 

We’ll never know. It’s “never mine” to figure out.

More Songs From folklore: 

• folklore Prologue
• the 1
• cardigan
• the last great american dynasty
• exile
• my tears ricochet
• mirrorball
• seven
• this is me trying
• illicit affairs 
• invisible string
• mad woman
• epiphany
• betty
• peace
• hoax
• the lakes