The 11-time Grammy winner received a Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa, during the university's morning ceremony, which was held at Yankee Stadium.
Please bear in mind that I in no way feel qualified to tell you what to do. You've worked and struggled and sacrificed and studied and dreamed your way here today. And so you know what you're doing. You'll do things differently than I did them and for different reasons. So I won't tell you what to do, because no one likes that.
And while we're talking about things that make us squirm but really shouldn't, I'd like to say, I'm a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things. It seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of unbothered ambivalence. This outlook perpetuates the idea that it's not cool to want it. That people who don't try are fundamentally more chic than people who do.
I said to you earlier that I don't ever offer advice unless someone asks me for it and now I'll tell you why. As a person who started my very public career at the age of 15, it came with a price. And that price was years of unsolicited advice. Being the youngest person in every room for over a decade meant that I was constantly being issued warnings from older members of the music industry, media, interviewers, executives. And this advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings.
Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical pieces about who they perceived me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation. But it also made me look inward. To learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and 20s, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely.
How will you know what the right choice is in these crucial moments? You won't. How do I give advice to this many people about their life choices? I won't. The scary news is you're on your own now. But the cool news is, you're on your own now.
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