GRADUATION TAY!
NYU Class of '22 gets a Swift sendoff
Live, learn, love . . . and shake it off.
Eleven-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift made New York University’s 2022 commencement ceremony the hottest ticket in town on Wednesday when she rocked the podium at Yankee Stadium to address the graduating class.
The 32-year-old singer-songwriter was the guest of honor in a purple robe and black velvet cap punctuated with her signature red lipstick, accepting an honorary fine-arts doctorate and sharing 20 minutes of pop-star wisdom.
“Let me just say: Welcome to New York. It’s been waiting for you,” Swift began, kicking off the address with a smirk and lyrics from her 2014 hit about her own move to the Big Apple. She joked that the last time she was in a stadium, “I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard.”
“I’m . . . 90% sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called ‘22,’ ” she quipped, lamenting on how she “never got the normal college experience, per se,” although she did film her music video for “Love Story” in a college dorm. “But I really can’t complain . . . because you went to NYU during a global pandemic,” she said. Then Swift gave earnest advice about letting go of grudges, exes and any toxic relationship to make room for the new chapters while learning to “live alongside cringe.” (Ex Jake Gyllenhaal might question how successfully Swift has done this in her own life.)
“No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. You can’t avoid it, so don’t try to,” she said, noting a phase in 2012 when she “dressed like a 1950s housewife.”
“I was having fun,” she said. “Looking back and laughing is fun . . . I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things . . . Never be ashamed of trying,” she advised.
Pop and circumstance
She preached the importance of making mistakes, because she remembers feeling like she couldn’t make them as a teen.
“It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and, ultimately, the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life. This has not been my experience. My mistakes lead to the best things in my life. And being embarrassed when you mess up, it’s part of the human experience,” she said.
Swift went on to jab her critics, saying, “I was a teenager at a time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models” and “having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport.”
She concluded: “I leave you with this: We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. And you will screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about it on the Internet.”