It was one of the first warm days last year and Janice the cat and her son were jumping around in the car. Then the words came to their minds.
“Dance until you love me,” they sang over and over again.
Over the next few months they frequented this line, often while Janice drove. The words eventually became the basis for the D.C.-area alt-pop singer's latest — and possibly final — song: At 31, Janice is in hospice care with an aggressive form of cancer.
At the end of her life, Janice wanted to release the song that began as a bonding moment with her 7-year-old and pass the proceeds from the single on to him. She rushed to release the music on January 19, a day before her birthday.
“I didn’t even know if I was still alive when that song came out. So I just did it and now here we are,” said Janice, née Catherine Janice Ipsan. “And honestly, it’s a miracle.”
The song “Dance You Outta My Head” has since risen to the top 10 on iTunes and has been used in more than 34,000 TikToks. The users sharing it range from young adults to people whose accounts identify themselves as “GramaCarolyn” and “Grandadjoe.” Have several posted in other languages, including French and Ukrainian, to encourage others to share the song for support. Even singer Jason Derulo commented on one of Janice's videos that he was praying for her.
Many of the people share the single said they felt a personal connection to Janice's story. For 18-year-old Sophie Soraya Hamidi, her experience with lymphoma sparked a desire to support another cancer patient. She used the song in a TikTok that showed her taking blood tests.
“Listening to that song, 'Dance You Outta My Head,' is a way for me to say, 'I'm not going to think about this cancer,'” she said.
The song's success had repercussions. David Zierler, owner of Las Vegas-based label Handwritten Records, which worked with Janice on an album last year, said the hit spurred people to discover more of her music.
“You don’t just listen to this one song,” he said. “They are following her. They follow the story.”
“I didn’t even know if I was still alive when that song came out. So I just did it and now here we are.”
— Cat Janice
Janice grew up in Annandale, the daughter of a former DJ who taught her children a love of the Beatles and Pink Floyd. As a child, Janice played violin in a local orchestra and later spent hours writing songs.
Her brother Will Ipsan said she always escaped to her bedroom to tinker with the piano while the family played board games. When he finally came upstairs to her, she was still engrossed in the music.
“There she is sitting at her piano, playing a Lana Del Rey song and staring out the window.” said Ipsan, 27.
Janice was working as a geospatial scientist and building her career as a singer when her life changed dramatically in 2022. An unusual lump in her neck turned out to be sarcoma, a rare cancer. She dropped out of her master's degree in coastal geology and limited her work hours while traveling regularly to New York City for treatment.
Seventeen rounds of chemotherapy later, doctors delivered much-needed good news: Janice was cancer-free. Her now-husband Kyle Higginbotham said the couple bought a home in West Palm Beach, Florida, and were ready for a change.
This new chapter never came. A few months later, the cancer came back, and this time it was in her lungs.
But Janice continued making music, performing in shows and recording her aptly named album Modern Medicine. She documented her experiences with cancer on TikTok and Instagram, gaining followers who supported her both during her illness and for her music.
In the fall, Janice entered an American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers competition where she was paired with Tony Award-nominated songwriter Max Vernon. They spent the next few weeks on video calls and working out released the song that Janice and her son had started composing – and ended up winning the competition.
In December, Janice's health deteriorated rapidly. She and Higginbotham, who got engaged at her album release party in August, decided to accelerate their marriage plans.
“We're approaching Christmas,” Higginbotham recalled, “and the conversations with the doctors just went from 'We think we can beat this thing' to 'It's moving very quickly'.”
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They married on December 28th in the church where her parents had married years before – Janice wore a shimmering gold dress and crown. Although she had to remain seated during the ceremony, Higginbotham said she was able to muster enough strength to walk down the aisle.
A few days later, Janice was admitted to the intensive care unit. Realizing that she might not survive much longer, she decided to release one final title that would honor her connection to her son Loren. A music-loving child and a big fan of his mother's songs, he often helps Janice with music videos and goes to her home studio to give his opinion.
Janice also wanted her final song to have a positive message. She had a lot of sad or sassy clues in the vault, she said, but sharing them didn't feel right. In contrast, “Dance You Outta My Head” focuses on dancing until you forget someone you don’t want to think about.
“She just wanted everyone to dance and remember her that way,” Ipsan said. “And remember her as someone who got you dancing – out of your head and into your body.”
Typically, Janice spends a month or two preparing a song for release, but she knew she didn't have that much time. She decided not to work with her usual label and released the track independently.
“Dance You Outta My Head” became public just before Janice's birthday on January 20, when friends and family surprised her with a party in her hospice room. Surrounded by glittering disco balls and gold balloons, Janice marveled at being alive.
“Truly,” she said, “I feel blessed by God to be able to experience this moment with my son.”
The support of relatives and fans gave Janice a boost in what may be her last days. When she woke up in the middle of the night one day and saw her song starting on iTunes, she screamed in excitement – causing her friend to run into the room, thinking something was completely wrong.
Janice has to undergo radiation, which her brother says has bought her some time, and the family is raising funds for her continued treatment.
But Janice knows that this song could mean the end of her music career, and she hopes that her legacy will be that she always remained true to herself in her music and other creations.
“Any art that I left behind, whether it was pottery or painting or whatever, was just an expression of myself and was just me,” she said. “Here I am, you know?”