Earlier this week, Taylor Swift called out test prep company The Princeton Review for misquoting her lyrics from "Fifteen" in one of their practice test questions. The section of questions directed students to find errors in a handful of pop songs, which the company wrote were "a great source of bad grammar." Swift was none too pleased and took to tumblr to share a photo of the misquoted lyric.
"Not the right lyrics at all pssshhhh," Swift wrote, "You had one job, test people. One job."
The Princeton Review had written the lyrics as, "Somebody tells you they love you, you got to believe 'em." However, the actual line from Swift's song is "Somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them."
Despite the lyrics being accurate or not, they are technically grammatically incorrect in both cases. Because somebody is a singular pronoun, "they" should be "he or she" and "them/'em" should be "him or her." Yeah, we know it sounds awkward, so we don't really fault Swift for going the colloquial route.
The Princeton review acknowledged the lyrical slip-up on Twitter, but noted that regardless of how much they love TSwift, the SAT would still deduct points for the "somebody/them" mistake.
"I want to make sure that folks know that we're big Taylor Swift fans and that we apologize for the misrepresentation in the lyric," The Princeton Review's SVP-publisher Rob Franek told MTV News after the news started to make headlines. "I appreciate her response, but the question on the grammar still holds true."
"If we look at the whole sentence, it starts off with 'somebody,' and 'somebody,' as you know, is a singular pronoun and if it's singular, the rest of the sentence has to be singular," he added.
However, they later apologized a second time for the gaffe. In a Twitter post, the company shows a corrected version of Swift's lyrics (a.k.a. a piece of pink paper with the correct words handwritten and pasted on to the page). But the apology tour didn't stop there. The company also offered a grammar-loving Swiftie two tickets to one of her shows.
"Sorry @taylorswift13! We'll make it up to you. Pick a #grammar lover fan. 2 tickets to a U.S. show on us! @people."
Sorry @taylorswift13! We'll make it up to you. Pick a #grammar lover fan. 2 tickets to a U.S. show on us! @people pic.twitter.com/xG9ABdsFuO
— The Princeton Review (@ThePrincetonRev) March 24, 2015
