While it seems that all she touches turns to gold and everything she releases goes platinum, even Taylor Swift cannot avoid an occasional brush with imperfection. Since spelling was on our minds last week thanks to the national competition (and given that it’s our job), we could not avoid exploring a gaffe that appears on a long-sleeved shirt that promotes the megastar’s song “ME!,” as the garment takes the whole “your”-versus-“you’re” discussion to new heights by proclaiming, “Your’e the only one of you.”
EXCUSE ME! I've had this shirt for nearly a month and you're telling me it's had a typo THIS WHOLE TIME!! pic.twitter.com/8P9p6BPMuV
— 𝓛𝑜𝓋𝑒, April 🤍 (@SavvyStardust) June 5, 2019
The 29-year-old singer-songwriter has inspired a few examinations of her fame on our part, and while we genuinely root for her, especially thanks to her Pennsylvania roots, a good typo story is as irresistible as pizza.
In this case, the aforementioned tune led Swift to peddle merch that, in a perfect world, would have just been another example of a musician using apparel to promote a creative work. But, courtesy of a fan, we saw a tweet that noted the top’s misspelling of “You’re” as “Your’e” on lyrics that should have declared “You’re the only one of you/Baby that’s the fun of you.”
Printing gaffes are interesting to explore no matter what, but considering that the song from which the shirt quotes contains the lyrics “Hey, kids, spelling is fun,” we have on our hands (and on some fans’ bodies) an undeniable example of irony, not to mention an illustration of a missing comma after “Baby.” (We couldn’t help ourselves. Again, it’s our job.)
Many folks have fallen prey to confusing “you’re” and “your,” so we might not have chuckled as much had the promo item confused the two, but this mistake makes it seem as if someone blended the forms to create an even bigger headache for the masses. Swift is obviously not to fault here, and the singer, according to multiple sources, has not commented on the miscue yet. If we could, we would have reminded her to “Proofread, proofread, proofread.”
The error has already led to a few news accounts, meaning more attention will go her way and could prompt Swift devotees to secure the mistake-bearing shirts just to give homage to all things Taylor. Since “ME!” has fallen on the charts, the flawed product could somehow spark sales to increase, too, because there is no such thing as bad press (only shoddy proofers, it seems).
