Anastacia is back! The US superstar is set to grace Marbella’s Starlite Festival on her Ultimate Collection European Tour ON JULY 15!
The ‘Left Outside Alone’ singer, established herself as one of the top selling international female popstars of the early noughties before taking a break in 2006. She made her return to the music world in 2014 and since then has released her sixth studio album, ‘Resurrection’ and an ‘Ultimate Collection,’ featuring singles from her five previous albums which peaked in the top 10 of the UK album charts.
Born in 1968, Anastasia started her showbiz career aged 15 as a dancer for hire, appearing in many music videos and on Club MTV. Her music career started two years later as a backing vocalist for stars such as Jamie Foxx and Paula Abdul. She could never get a record company to sign her as an artist as her voice was too unusual and so there was no place for her.
Eventually in 1998 she finally attracted the interest of numerous record labels as well as stars such as Michael Jackson and Elton John after making it to the finals of the MTV talent show ‘The Cut’. She eventually signed with Daylight Records, a family member of Sony Music Entertainment in March 1999.
Rumours plagued the Chicago born star for years that she was older than she claimed to be – which she vehemently denied. However, in 2008 she admitted she was lying after all (!) and she was soon to turn 40. She told The Daily Mail, “I went on a television show and you had to be under 29… I went along with it for years, but I told the truth when I went to another label. I felt so guilty.”
She shaved six years off her real age to compete not knowing that she would have to keep up with her lie for the next decade. She was so deep in her lie that she had to basically rewrite her life, even asking her siblings to lie about their own ages.
“Journalists would be asking me when I was born… and I would panic. But everyone [in the industry] does it. I thought that was what you were supposed to do. I thought it meant that I had made it. But I really don’t know how people can keep up with the lie,” she confessed.
Anastacia has faced a number of devastating health battles in her life. Aged just 13 she was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, an incurable bowel condition. As a result she had a foot of her intestines removed along with several lymph nodes. The doctors had to cut through so much stomach muscle that she ended up in a wheelchair for a while because she didn’t have any core muscles to support her weight. 
After a producer told her she was too fat for the music business when she was 19, the singer went on a high fibre diet which caused a relapse of her Crohn’s. After spending three weeks in hospital; being fed through a tube and pumped with high-dose steroids, she suffered effects such as hair loss, acne, weight gain and swelling.
This horrible experienced made her decide to face her illness head on. “My look changed, but so did my attitude,” she said. “I learned not to be vain and realised I couldn’t ignore my illness any more. It was incurable and I’d need to learn to deal with it properly.” So she made the decision to look after her body by eating clean, avoiding too much fibre, rarely drinking and having a zero tolerance policy to drugs and smoking.
After being diagnosed with breast cancer twice, first in 2003 and again in 2013, Anastacia underwent a double mastectomy. In a statement back in October 2013 she said, “l was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time earlier this year and am currently in the final stages of recovery after undergoing a double mastectomy. It has been an intense journey but l am feeling great and ready to start the next chapter.”
The discovery of her first diagnosis of breast cancer was a total accident. After she was tired of her big breasts giving her backache she decided to get a reduction surgery. It was the mammogram before the surgery that showed a cancerous tumour. Luckily, it was caught early, but doctors said, left just a month longer and it would likely have become life threatening.
If the Crohn’s Disease and Breast Cancer weren’t enough health issues for one person, Anastacia also has sciatica, herniated disks in her spine, and the heart condition supraventricular tachycardia.
Last year Anastacia stirred up quite the controversy as she appeared on BBC One’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. The singer was paired with Brendan Cole in the TV dance comp, and in just the second week escaped the eliminations because of an injury she suffered due to damaged scar tissue left from her double mastectomy.
Strictly’s rules state that if one dancer can’t perform – then they must go by the public vote meaning Melvin Odoom got the boot. She consequently received tonnes of backlash on Twitter with people claiming the decision to be unfair. The US star was eventually the sixth contestant to be voted off – losing out to Ed Balls in the dance off. The ‘I’m Outta Love’ singer also appeared as a judge on 2 episodes of ‘The X Factor’.
In November 2016 Anastacia bravely went bare in an intimate cover shoot for Fault Magazine, revealing the scars from her double mastectomy. She explained to the magazine that she desired control over her scars by releasing them in a photoshoot. “If paparazzi photographed them, I’d feel like I was being shamed but being able to release them this way, I feel extremely empowered,” she said. Reclaiming her femininity was also a big factor in deciding to do the shoot. “Nipple sensation is something that cancer robbed from my anatomy and I’m used to it now but there is that little part of me that will always be lost. Doing Strictly and doing this shoot I feel like I’m finally becoming the woman that I was again.”
To get Tickets for Anastacia’s performance at Starlite visit: www.starlitemarbella.com or call 902 750 787.
