The making, keeping, and breaking of promises, oaths, and vows seems to be something close to Taylor Swift’s heart. On the title track of her 2010 album Speak Now, Swift sings of a girl “rudely barging in on a white veil occasion” to deliver a message to the boy that she loves who is about to marry someone else: “Don’t wait or say a single vow; you need to hear me out, and they said ‘speak now.’” Or there is the memorable line in one of her best-loved songs, “All Too Well” (2012): “You call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest.” Nearly a decade later, Swift released a ten-minute version of “All Too Well” (2021) with expanded lyrics and an accompanying music video that sparked global gossip about who the subject of Swift’s jilted fury could be. In contrast to her lover’s flippant promise-breaking, Swift expresses her own devotion: “You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath – sacred prayer and we’d swear to remember it – all too well.”

What Taylor Swift can teach us about making vows.