Pop rock legend Anastacia admitted that speaking out about her cancer journey was a matter of survival, not bravery. In an exclusive interview backstage at the Isle of Wight festival, she told the Mirror: "Did I think it was brave? I didn't really know what I was doing. It was out of survival."
Raising Awareness and the Humanitarian Award
The Chicago-born singer, known for hits like 'I'm Outta Love' and 'Left Outside Alone', has twice beaten breast cancer and was awarded GQ's Humanitarian Award for her advocacy work. She explained her motivation: "I think it's a choice, and my choice was to raise awareness to what I didn't even know about. Why don't we know that 75 percent of women that get cancer aren't hereditary? Because that's a big number."
She added: "So that was why I was like, 'I'm going to tell on you guys, I'm telling on cancer, I'm telling on doctors…' No offence to doctors, they can't tell us because it's not science, so I said, 'okay, well, I'm gonna tell', and I have a big mouth."
Personal Life and Focus on Music
Accompanied by her chocolate Yorkshire terrier Broady, Anastacia also spoke about relationships, having confessed to Hello magazine last year that she is no longer interested in "crippling" romantic partnerships. She told the Mirror: "Sometimes I have somebody, and sometimes I don't. It's nice later in life to just enjoy what you're doing without it being the focus. Let other people and their marriages and relationships in and out be the focus. My music is my focus, my dog is my focus."
New Music and Creative Spark
The musical spark has returned to Anastacia's life. Translating obscure German artists into English for her 2023 covers album 'Our Songs' reawakened her songwriting, dormant since 2017's 'Evolution' album. She revealed: "I'm writing new music. It's refreshing to know that I still can do it. I don't have a plan of sorts, I just keep getting in a studio with somebody here and there and writing. I don't write before I get in there, and it could be the first time I'm meeting somebody, but there's always a kinetic energy and you just go for it, bounce off the energy going on."
Isle of Wight Performance
Clad in a star-studded leather jacket, her mid-afternoon set featured windswept country soul anthems, disco funk, and a surprise cover of Guns N' Roses' 'Sweet Child O' Mine', originally recorded for her 2012 covers album 'It's a Man's World'. She said: "I did a greatest hits album of all rock songs, so I just thought maybe it would be good for this festival to have just a little moment of something they'd appreciate. It's not an easy song to sing."
Reflecting on a 25-Year Career
A quarter of a century into her career, Anastacia is grateful to still be performing. "I can't even believe I'm doing it, it's really wild," she said. "But I love it even more, maybe, than when I was first starting, because I was so unaware and so naive, and thinking 'this is going to end tomorrow'. And now 25 years have gone, and it's not ending tomorrow unless you want it to end at this point."
