If there’s one thing Taylor Swift loves, it’s an Easter egg. So when fans noticed that a new limited-edition shirt from the singer’s merch line had a typo, they had a field day. Was it an honest mistake…or a clue about her forthcoming album?
The just-released shirts appear to have a misplaced apostrophe that makes the text read, “Your’e the only one of you.” Now, you may remember how, in her latest song, “Me!,” Swift happily exclaims, “Spelling is fun!” Now, technically, this is an issue with punctuation, not spelling. Still: Could this possibly be a callback to the single? Or did the merch just skip the copyedit stage?
A fan caught the error and alerted Twitter, writing in a tweet: “EXCUSE ME! I’ve had this shirt for nearly a month and you’re telling me it’s had a typo THIS WHOLE TIME!!”
But there’s a twist: Not every shirt features the misplaced apostrophe on it, according to BuzzFeed, bolstering the hypothesis that there might be a reason for the grammar snafu.
Still, the fans ran with it.
For most people, the whole”you’re”/”your’e” thing was more funny than anything. (“So much for ‘Spelling is fun,’ am I right?” one person tweeted.) But lots of dedicated Swifities latched onto the idea that the typo’s actually meant as an Easter egg and began putting forth ideas about what the shirt could mean.
“Your’e’ on @taylorswift13 ‘s merch is because it closely resembles ‘Urie’ to reference @brendonurie??? #ConspiracyTime,” one fan guessed.
It wouldn’t be a total surprise if it was indeed an Easter egg. As Swift revealed when she appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, she really likes leaving fans a trail of bread crumbs that offer insights about her music projects. And we’ll admit she’s gotten really, really good at them as well: She basically turned the entire EW cover into a secret puzzle by wearing a jacket with dozens of buttons on it that each provided some kind of hint about her upcoming seventh album (our eyes still hurt from trying to figure all of them out). She’s planted so many other clues recently that fans have come up with a seemingly endless list of theories about her latest release.
“I love that they like the cryptic hint dropping,” she said. “Because as long as they like it, I’ll keep doing it. It’s fun. It feels mischievous and playful.” We’ll just have to see if this is another example of her being playful or just a very public “whoops” moment.
