Swift gave a name to "the other woman" in Betty and James's love triangle. While Swift never names the woman James has an affair with in Folklore, Swift pictured her as an Augusta and Augustine when creating the album. She also noted that she doesn't believe James's mistress was a villain at all. "She's not a bad girl, she's really 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," Swift said.
"This Is Me Trying" is about addiction and mental illness. When creating the track, Swift noted that she was thinking a lot about how people cope with addiction and mental illness on a daily basis and how hard that must be to actively try to be better. "No one pats them on the back every day, but every day they are actively fighting something," she said.