Anastacia: I’m as fragile and as broken as anyone else

Anastacia says the industry has changed during her time away (Picture: Ralf Strathmann)

Breast cancer survivor Anastacia is back with new album Resurrection. She talks about her aim to spread her grateful energy.
‘I’m not saying “mastectomies for everyone!”,’ says Anastacia Newkirk. The US singer decided to undergo a double mastectomy last year after being diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time. ‘It’s not an easy decision for any woman,’ she adds, ‘but for me it was an empowering one.’
Newkirk, 45, originally underwent treatment for breast cancer in 2003 when she had a lumpectomy followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy. ‘The second time, I was told I had breast cancer and that it was in the other breast,’ she says. ‘I thought: “I’ve been down this road before and I know it could mean getting it a third time, I’m not really into that idea so what can I do?”’
She had investigated the possibility of a double mastectomy years earlier. ‘I thought because I’d had the idea in the back of my mind, it would be easier to have the operation but it wasn’t,’ she says. ‘It’s a serious life change – you’re removing part of your body. But I knew I could do it and not have radiation and wouldn’t have to go down that road again – and I’d come out of it breast cancer-free.
‘For me, there was no other choice. I don’t like to gamble. I don’t know if I’ll get another type of cancer, I’m not a crystal ball reader, but I do know now I won’t go through breast cancer again and there’s a sense of freedom I get from that.’

Newkirk underwent the ten-and-a-half-hour surgery last April but only finished the reconstructive operations a couple of months before promotion started for her new album, Resurrection, her first new material since 2008’s Heavy Rotation.
Naturally upbeat and a somewhat quirky interviewee – she goes off on a series of tangents – she’s perhaps previously given the impression she found dealing with cancer easy. Far from it.

Anastacia singing with Bono for Nelson Mandela in 2003 (Picture: Getty Images)

‘Some people have seen me as strong and invincible and happy all the time but it’s not true,’ she says. ‘I try to be as pleasant as possible in public but when people say I’m super-strong and I nipped cancer in the bud, I’m like: “Are you kidding me?” It took over a year. I just wasn’t doing press when I was having treatment for cancer.
‘I’m just as fragile and broken as anyone else at times. We all have to get through our stuff as best we can. Some of us have strong armour, some of us don’t. Sometimes my armour has been very strong and sometimes it’s been very fragile.’
She’s written about these upheavals on Resurrection. It wasn’t only her health problems that meant she had such a lengthy break from recording, though: she had a divorce from Wayne Newton, her former bodyguard, to contend with and changed management companies and record labels as well.
With the new deal came her first flop, Heavy Rotation. ‘I went along with what the record company suggested, which was a shift to r’n’b,’ she says. ‘My fans were not that appreciative of the change of music. After three hit albums I was due for a dud. I was like: “Well, this one is probably a tanker.”’
The path to her initial success, with 2000’s global mega hit I’m Outta Love, wasn’t smooth, either. Newkirk got her first deal after appearing on an MTV talent show, her last attempt to make it before abandoning her singing dreams.
‘I was 30, working as an aerobics teacher, in hair salons, as a wedding singer, and I had a lot of rejection,’ she says. ‘I didn’t sound like Mariah or Celine and people would say: “You’re blonde, you wear glasses – what are you?” People didn’t know what to do with me. So I was shocked to find out I was actually sellable.’
Aside from singing with Elton John, Pavarotti and Queen, and performing for Nelson Mandela, she’s proudest of her album sales, which total a whopping 30 million, although she’s too modest to talk figures herself.
‘I don’t like to say, you know, it could be around that number,’ she says. ‘But I’m really proud to have achieved those sales because it’s not a numbers games these days. It’s a big accomplishment, even though it was overwhelming at the time.’
Newkirk says she is energised about her comeback, although has little idea what to expect from an industry that has changed so much during her time away.
‘We had in-store signings, people bought records, we had Top Of The Pops,’ she says. ‘Now things are so different. It’s like going on a first date again. It’s the zest for the unknown and the fear of the unknown. I can’t do anything else, I’m a songwriter and singer, I don’t have anything else to fall back on.’
She doesn’t have any ‘grandiose’ expectations for how the album will do but wants it to sell well enough for her to be able to record another one.
‘Right now, after everything that’s happened, I’m just grateful,’ she says. ‘I have a grateful energy about me and I’m going to spread it all around the world.’