In August 2011, the song debuted at #1 on the UK's pop music charts. By February 2012, the music video had received over 11 million views on youtube. Yet the irony remains that, in the face of such accolades, Nero's song, “Promises,” defies any definitive meaning. Nobody seems to agree on what the song actually says, and the sparse lyrics provoke depth and yet evade anyone who attempts to interpret them. Do the lyrics actually propound a decipherable message rooted somewhere within the pulse-pounding, high-energy dizziness of the track? Or are the lyrics just ornaments loosely hung as frills to the rapturous dizziness?
I side with the former, that a message does indeed lurk amidst the loud, wobbly tones. So, without further ado, I give you the lyrics:
So high I cannot feel the fire.
Telling me that you'll be sweet,
And you'll never want to leave my side
As long as I don't break these...
Promises, and they still feel all so wasted on myself.
Why should I be so surprised?
Don't you see it in my eyes?
Telling me that you'll be sweet,
And you'll never want to leave my side
As long as I don't break these...
Promises, and they still feel all so wasted on myself.
So here's my thesis: I think the song is about the raucous insecurity that a woman feels within a budding romance, a romance that both excites her and scares her to death as she wrestles with her own inadequacy to sustain the exhilarating and yet emotionally dangerous possibilities.
Now to try and prove my thesis. To start off, I think definitions are in order, especially for the song's key word: Promises. I must state my presupposition up front: For my thesis to work, the word “promises” must stand for a mutual, bilateral commitment rather than singular vows made unilaterally by one party to another. In other words, promises operate in this song in a covenantal way, binding two people together in a committed relationship. So in the song, the promises aren't words of assurance upheld by one party for the benefit of the other but rather a set of binding symbols of a romantic commitment upheld by both parties equally, with both parties equally capable of “breaking” the promises (i.e. failing to uphold his or her end of the commitment). Only by conceiving of promises in this way does the song make sense; otherwise, one cannot conceive of how the woman could break her lover's promise or vice versa, or how her own promises could be wasted on herself.
So, with this covenant-commitment definition of “promises” in place, we can now exegete the song. With the first two lines, the woman already betrays that she feels disarmed and vulnerable: “You got me so wild, / How can I ever deny?” The question in the second line divulges a latent desire to deny the intoxicating effect that her lover has on her, but she cannot hide it. He drives her crazy with dizzying passion, and although she wishes to conceal her turbulence and maintain propriety, she finds herself unable to mask the wildness he has effected in her.
Such emotional invigoration feels to her like a drug, and she refers to it as such in the next two lines: “You got me so high, / So high I cannot feel the fire.” In this context, the fire here cannot refer to her passion because although she feels her passion acutely, she cannot feel the fire at all. The fire, then, would stand for something too hot and too dangerous for her to touch. In other words, her lover is causing her to throw caution to the wind; her passion for him is causing her to neglect or even to ignore the possible dangers inherent in this kind of relationship. Romantic failure can produce the most searing kind of pain, and it's fear of this pain that prompts her desire to deny her feelings. She finds such feelings impossible to deny, however, and her lover's intoxicating effect on her also numbs or disables her ability to assess the possible dangers of this romance. She feels vulnerable. She feels undone. She feels insecure about surrendering this much control to someone else.
(Seen another way, “high” could refer to height rather than to the effects of a drug, in which case she would then be describing how she feels like a bird soaring so high above an erupting volcano that the bird cannot feel the heat. Given either interpretation of “high,” however, the meaning stays the same: Her lover's presence disarms her, rendering her unable or at least unwilling to evaluate the possible ways that she could get “burned” by the fire of romantic disappointment. She is aware of the fire and knows that she should not get too near lest she get burned, but she cannot feel the force of that danger right now because her intoxication with her lover crowds out all other feelings.)
As if her mention of the fire sparks just a little rationality in her, she speaks the next lines in almost an accusatory tone: “And you keep telling me, / Telling me that you'll be sweet, / That you'll never want to leave my side...” Here, the insecurity begins to nestle in like a black cat upon her shoulder. Even while her lover is whispering tenderly and repeatedly to her, trying to reassure her of his love and fidelity, she finds herself unable to accept his assurances, not because she doubts his words but rather because she doubts herself. She puts the responsibility for maintaining his words squarely on her own shoulders: “As long as I don't break these / Promises, and they still feel all so wasted on myself.”
And here we've arrived at the chorus, the enigmatic punchline of her song. Here she reveals that she wants to accept her lover's generous words, but she views his words as merely conditional upon her own performance in the relationship, conditional upon her ability not to “break these promises.”
Perhaps she thinks this way because of wounds she's received from a man in her past who said the same sweet things to her but discarded her the moment she couldn't fulfill all his dreams. Perhaps she thinks this way because she's crippled a past lover by something she did or said. But whatever the reason may be, the “as long as” destroys everything for her. It's only “as long as” she doesn't break her end of the commitment that her lover's words will stand, and she very much doubts her own ability to uphold her end of the “bargain.”
Therefore, she finds herself not encouraged but rather resentful of his words because they only remind her of her own insecurity, her own inadequacy, when it comes to making the relationship last. She finds herself all too able to break her promises to him, to botch her end of the commitment and thereby render all the commitments that he makes as “all so wasted” on her.
By implication, then, she actually does have a high estimation of her lover. She actually does trust him enough to take his words at face value, but because of her insecurity, his assurances of his love for her only cause her to feel unsure about her ability to receive and to maintain that love. She seems to respect her lover, but she doesn't respect her own ability to reciprocate his love. And if his love is contingent upon hers, she thinks, then she might as well declare that he is only wasting his promises on her because she feels that she will only fail to uphold her end of the commitment.
The thought that she could lose his love because of her own inadequacy makes her want to send him away to find a more “worthy” partner, a partner who won't be as prone to breaking her commitment to him. She's thinking, “Perhaps he's only wasting his time on me because I'll only end up hurting him.” And the fear of hurting him seems to supersede even her fear of getting hurt by him.
This raucous insecurity bleeds freely into verse two: “You got me so wild, / Why should I be so surprised? / You got me so high, / Can't you see it in my eyes?” The questions now multiply. She is indeed surprised by the ire of her passion for her lover, a passion that apparently dilates her pupils and blazes from her eyes like sunbeams. And yet, such a visceral response seems only to make her more self-conscious and diffident as she repeats, “And you keep telling me, / Telling me that you'll be sweet, / And you'll never want to leave my side. / As long as I don't break these... / Promises, and they still feel all so wasted on myself.” Probably a part of her savors the thought of a man who would always and only speak to her sweetly and who would never want to leave her side, but she believes that such a dream could never last; in her estimation, he will leave her side when he finds out more about her, that she can't pull her weight in the relationship, that she will fail him, that she will break her promises and thus prove to him that all his promises were “all so wasted” on her.
This fear paralyzes her. This fear that “whether or not you love me depends solely on me” is, I think, a fear that many women (and men) feel every day as they struggle to negotiate their lives in a society almost totally devoid of grace. If there is no such thing as grace, if there is no such thing as “I will love you and forgive you no matter what you do to me,” then perhaps we're perpetually cursed to live in a prison of relational insecurity, wherein your love for me will always be contingent upon what I can do for you in return. By contrast, how much more room there would be for true love and security if we could just get past the give-and-take mentality that forms the foundation of just about every interaction between human beings.
Beyond the society of give-and-take, there lies the dream of a society of grace wherein a man can honestly say to the woman in this song, “You can forget the 'as long as.' I will be sweet to you. I will never want to leave your side. And when you stumble, and when you fail me, and when you break my heart, I will still be sweet to you. I will still never want to leave your side. Because my love for you is not contingent on what you do for me or to me. So you need not fear that my love will be all so wasted on yourself. My promises to you won't break, even if your promises to me do.”
What a security it would bring to be loved steadfastly like that. But I know of only one man in all of history who could say all that and really mean it.
If only I could be more like that man.
