Definitions of Love
Some of Taylor Swift's songs set out to define love itself: the speaker catalogues, tests, or interrogates what love is, not simply experiencing it but naming its qualities (oath, sacred prayer, masterpiece, real, rare, innocent) and measuring the relationship against them. The song's argument turns on the gap between what love should be and what the partner offered. A particularly wide-ranging instance is State of Grace, which catalogues love as battlefield, spiritual transcendence, surprise, renewal, risk, pain, fate, and a mosaic of broken pieces gathered into something beautiful; there the song's value is measured not by permanence or perfection but by what love does to the people inside it while it lasts.
Appears in 3 songs
“But I stay when you're lost and I'm scared and you're turnin' away”
Angela & Uncle Jerry read the song as fundamentally promissory, a resolution of love. Uncle Jerry frames the title's connection to New Year's resolutions as deliberate: 'she resolves the continuance of the relationship.' He identifies the chorus lines as 'a resolution, a promise', 'when things are beginning to unravel, when things are beginning to come apart a little, I'll stay.' The 'toast of the town' / 'strike out and crawling home' pairing is read as 'for better or worse,' and Uncle Jerry calls the whole song 'very promissory, very resolutionary.' The episode title itself, 'The Resolutions of Love', frames the song as defining what love is through the act of promising to stay.
“I want your midnights But I'll be cleanin' up bottles with you on New Year's Day”
The chorus pivots on a one-line definition of what love is for the speaker: not the celebratory peak (the midnight kiss, the party) but the willingness to be present for what comes after it (the bottles, the drudgery, the cleanup). Uncle Jerry reads the line as the song's promissory note, 'she will be there for all those years, for all those memories, no matter what they bring... even if it's bad or hard or wrong or whatever', and frames the song's title as deliberate: 'she resolves the continuance of the relationship' on the day traditionally given over to making resolutions. The speaker isn't testing love against an external standard but laying down her own: love is staying for the unglamorous side. The pairing of 'toast of the town' / 'strike out and crawling home' and the explicit 'for better or worse' register Uncle Jerry hears as wedding-vow language anchor this as a definition rather than a description.
“You kept me like a secret, but I kept you like an oath”
Uncle Jerry identifies 'definitions of love' as one of the four major themes. He catalogues the song's various characterisations of what love is: 'an oath, a promise that it's sacred, that it involves prayer, that it's real, that it's rare, that it's innocent, that it's a masterpiece.' He argues the song explores the meaning, depth, and breadth of love, asking why the partner failed to recognise any of these qualities. Angela calls the secret/oath line her favourite Taylor Swift lyric ever written, emphasising the asymmetry between her sacred devotion and his casual concealment.
Angela & Uncle Jerry identify the entire song as an examination of the nature of love, with Uncle Jerry calling it 'a more comprehensive look than I've seen in her other poetry.' He catalogues a running list of definitions the song offers: love emerges out of a crowd, love is not safe, love is not guaranteed, love is worthwhile, love is transformative, love is transcendent, love is a battlefield, love is spiritually transcendent, love is a force of nature, love is a surprise, love is a source of renewal, love is unsafe, love brings pain, love is risk, love is fate, love is pieces glued together. He explicitly states that 'she is defining the parameters and nature of love' and that 'if you wanted to write about patterns of imagery in the poem' you could trace how every image cluster serves that defining impulse. Angela agrees the song functions as a manifesto, and Uncle Jerry treats the bridge's 'good and right and real' tricolon as the moral framework against which love is measured throughout.