betty

The storyline is preceded by “cardigan” and “august.” The song takes a more feminist approach, portraying the narrator as a person named James who can’t own up to their mistakes, all while Betty flourishes on her own and recognizes her worth. Taylor went in depth into the inspiration behind James’ character, and the story as a whole, as well as revealing the inspiration behind the names in the song:

“[James] has lost the love of his life basically and doesn’t understand how to get it back. I think we all have these situations in our lives where we learn to really, really give a heartfelt apology for the first time. Everybody makes mistakes, everybody really messes up sometimes and this is a song that I wrote from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy. I’ve always loved that in music you can kinda slip into different identities and you can sing from other people’s perspectives. So that’s what I did on this one. I named all the characters in this story after my friends’ kids… and I hope you like it!” — Taylor Swift

THE TEENAGE LOVE TRIANGLE STORYLINE
Interestingly, James’ gender is never explicitly stated in the song — James and Inez (mentioned in the pre-chorus) are, in fact, the names of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ eldest daughters, leading some to believe that James could in fact be a girl. However, in “folklore: the long pond studio sessions” Taylor revealed that her boyfriend Joe Alwyn wrote the chorus from a boy’s perspective under the pseudonym William Bowery. She shared:

“I just heard Joe singing the entire fully formed chorus of ‘betty’ from another room. And I was just like, ‘Hello.’ It was a step that we would never have taken, because why would we have ever written a song together? So this was the first time we had a conversation where I came in and I was like, ‘Hey, this could be really weird, and we could hate this, so because we’re in quarantine and there’s nothing else going on, could we just try to see what it’s like if we write this song together?’ So he was singing the chorus of it, and I thought it sounded really good from a man’s voice, from a masculine perspective. And I really liked that it seemed to be an apology. I’ve written so many songs from a female’s perspective of wanting a male apology, that we decided to make it from a teenage boy’s perspective apologizing after he loses the love of his life because he’s been foolish.” — Taylor Swift

A RETURN TO TAYLOR’S COUNTRY ROOTS
Sonically, the song exudes a strong sense of nostalgia, delivering production and instrumentals reminiscent to Taylor’s earlier projects like “Taylor Swift” (2006) and “Fearless” (2008), both of which were records written by Taylor in her similarly naïve adolescence. Producer Aaron Dessner told Vulture:

“This one Taylor and William wrote, and then both Jack and I worked on it. We all kind of passed it around. This is the one where Taylor wanted a reference. She wanted it to have an early Bob Dylan, sort of a Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan feel. We pushed it a little more towards John Wesley Harding, since it has some drums. It’s this epic narrative folk song where it tells us a long story and connects back to ‘cardigan.’ It starts to connect dots and I think it’s a beautifully written folk song.” — Aaron Dessner

CRITICAL RECEPTION
Upon release, “betty” received widespread acclaim from music critics, who welcomed Taylor’s return to her country roots and praised the song’s storytelling and key change. The song debuted at No. 6 on Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, and No. 42 on the Billboard Hot 100, scoring Taylor her twenty-second top-10 hit on the former. Elsewhere, the song reached the top-40 in Australia, Canada and Singapore.

“betty” received its debut performance at the Grand Ole Opry House as part of the 55th Academy of Country Music Awards on September 16, 2020; this live version was released to all music platforms the next day. It was Taylor’s last televised performance of 2020.