NoVA-area alt-pop musician Cat Janice released her last song, “Dance You Outta My Head,” on January 19, the day before her 31st birthday, while she was at home in hospice care with cancer. All of the proceeds from this song will go to her 7-year-old son, Loren.
The artist, born Catherine Ipsan, was diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, in March 2022. She announced on January 5 that the cancer had progressed, writing in a TikTok video that “I’ve fought hard but sarcomas are too tough.”
“I want to leave behind smiles, grooves, and joy for you and I know this is the right song for that,” Janice said in a Facebook post on January 5. The idea for the song first came to her while she was dancing in the car with her son, The Washington Post reported.
In the song announcement, she asked viewers to presave and stream “Dance You Outta My Head,” to benefit her son.
And stream they did — since its release, the song has soared in popularity on social media and on streaming platforms. It has been featured in 22,500 videos on TikTok and streamed nearly 1.3 million times on Spotify, and Janice posted on January 22 that it had reached the No. 7 spot on the worldwide iTunes chart.
She wrote the song alongside playwright and songwriter Max Vernon, and it won the Robert Allen Award from the ASCAP Foundation in 2023.
“Dance You Outta My Head” isn’t the only song Janice has in her repertoire. She released an album titled Modern Medicine on July 28, and, earlier in her career, she won a Wammy Award for Best Rock Artist in 2019.
In a January 25 update to the GoFundMe created to fundraise for Janice’s medical expenses, the artist’s sister said that the team of doctors is trying again with radiation and that “after ten sessions, the tumors in her lungs and around her heart shrunk, giving her tremendous relief. Each day Cat becomes more like herself again; she is full of spunk, creativity, and gratefulness to live each day.”
The GoFundMe page has raised over $76,000 in donations, which the page says will go “first to saving Catherine’s life and second to her son Loren’s education, counseling, and music lessons.”
Feature image of Cat Janice by Skylar Watkins
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